T Mobile Extends High Speed Data
 

T Mobile USA has announced they will be having a high speed data promotion in 19 European countries for the rest of 2016. Notable omission of France from the list of countries although they include Russia. Keep hoping this becomes permanent and end the necessity of searching for local sims.

Worth noting that tethering is not allowed, and reasonable use is expected - rack up too any Gbs and you will be cut off.

I tethered in May and June with T-Mobile while in Europe, though I had to connect my laptop to my VPN before I could use it for some reason. DNS (name lookup) did not work until I connected via IP address to VPN - then I could tether all day and probably did every day of my trip.

T-Mobile USA has raised their base rate on new plans to $70/month - but that now means unlimited data. I guess that's great if you use a lot of data, but that probably prices me out of their service. (I don't use much data.) I don't have T-Mobile at the moment but won't switch back to them at that price. Next trip to Europe, I'll be buying local SIM cards again.

My daughter had T-Mobile for a while because she travels to Europe fairly often (sometimes to visit her mother!) However, their coverage was awful where she lives, and the final straw was that she didn't get good reception on a visit to London.

I have excellent T-Mobile coverage where I live and travel in the US. I still use GoSmart Mobile, a prepaid service owned by T-Mobile that operates on their network. But T-Mobile coverage does vary a lot in the US depending on where you live. It's generally far better in or near cities than in rural areas, where Verizon tends to have better coverage.

If T-Mobile coverage was poor in London, that means their roaming partner there has poor coverage.

We've used our TMobile plan before while traveling and just assumed we could use it on our upcoming France trip. I have done no checking at all on this so need a quick update.

xyz123--When you say with the exception of France does this mean that I can't use the service at all (and will have to go back to buying SIM cards), or does it mean I'll have very limited data usage coverage? Thanks.

No, no. You will get the unlimited texting and 20¢/minute calls and 2g data but France was not listed with the countries where you will get pretty much unlimited 4g lte data while roaming.

Reception while roaming has nothing to do with T Mobile or your home carrier per se but rather the roaming partners coverage and since t mobile can roam on any British carrier, there shouldn't be for the most part problems in London but of course that might be affected by being in a specific location in London.

T-Mobile will still work in France - check their website and type in "France" to confirm:

http://www.t-mobile.com/optional-services/roaming.html

The promotion is for unlimited 4GLTE data in 19 countries. In other countries, the data will be limited to a slower speed. (Perhaps 2G, not sure what they claim these days.) In my experience, that won't be an issue anyway unless you are streaming video or something. For reading email, Google Maps navigation, etc., you probably won't even notice. I didn't back in May and June before they were offering anything that fast.

Note that your phone will still connect at 4GLTE in Europe whether you are in one of those 19 countries or not, as long as your phone itself has the capability to use the local 4GLTE frequencies used in that country. But if you aren't in one of the 19 countries, data speeds will be capped to a slower speed, that's all.

Thanks for the last minute reassurance!