MichGuy

Hi All. My wife and I will be in France and Switzerland in September and wonder if our cell phones will work as promised by T-Mobile. We've been with T-Mobile for a year and this is our first trip outside the country with them.
T-Mobile customer service told me to turn on data roaming in "settings" on both phones and we'll be good to go. With that, texting is free; calls and voice mail will cost 25 cents per minute. With WiFi in a hotel we can turn off roaming and use WiFi calling, and everything will be free. No sim card change out, no new number.
Can this be true?
I'm thinking we'll leave the data roaming off and just catch up at night on hotel WiFi. Would hate to pay for spam calls. But good to have in case of need. We'll use other apps for personal calls.
Thanks for your thoughts / experience.

twk

My sister and I were in France in May. We're both T Mobile customers. She relied on T Mobile's international roaming, while I got an e-sim from Orange. Her T Mobile service worked fine for calls and texts, but the data is 2G, so it wasn't particularly useful for anything but downloading emails. You can work around that, but, if you really want to have the same phone features that you use at home, you'll need some kind of local plan.

Seamus

Yes, it's true. We've traveled internationally several times since changing to T-Mobile and have been quite pleased. The 2G data speeds were not really an issue, and most of the time we were connected to WiFi anyway as it is pretty ubiquitous.

aliced

Yup, we've used our T-Mobile service for several trips to Europe over the last 10-15 years without issue. We pay $60/month for BOTH our iPhones which beats about all other plans for unlimited text/talk/data. WiFi in Europe is at all hotels, so we only use it at them.

hetismij2

2G and 3G are being switched off across Europe, as they are around the world, so you probably will not end up on 2G even if T-Mobile would like you to. Certainly in Switzerland providers have already turned off 2G, but some in other countries are turning off 3G before 2G.

Leave data on, and just don't answer calls while roaming. Turn off voice mail. Anyone who urgently needs to get hold of you can do so by text or Whatsapp. Everyone else can wait. You are on vacation.

Wifi in hotels can be great, or it can be grim, even now.

progol

Like twk, we found the T-Mobile very unreliable for data. Data is something we like to have to do a Google search, say, while we’re out and want directions or information while we’re out touring. T-mobile works fine for texts but, if using it to make longer calls, it does add up. When we went to Portugal this year, we brought along an older I-phone and got a Vodafone SIM card which was great. I did try to set up an e-sim, but couldn’t get the settings right, unfortunately.

twk

One other thing to consider is that T-Mobile will only unlock your phone (which would allow you to use an e-sim and have dual sims running, which is the ultimate in connectivity) if you are not paying off your phone through your contract (i.e, you have to own your phone free and clear). So, if you are early in a T-Mobile contract, you are going to be more inclined to make do with their international coverage than try to use your T-Mobile phone with an international sim of some sort. If you can unlock it, and it's new enough to support dual sims, you'd really have to be pinching pennies not to get an international data plan with an e-sim.

panecott

I've used TMobile in Europe and Africa and it worked just fine. I should say I don't use my phone constantly but whenever I needed it, it delivered.
I use it mainly for emails, GPS, and an occasional call to a hotel I'm heading to. At night I use the hotel's Wi-fi.