Traveler_Nick - unfortunately so true across the world.

Don't get me involved in US hotel credit card retention charges (and their eventual release)! Last experience was arriving at a hotel near SFO around 22.00 with departure at 06.00. $200 retention charge. For what? No minibar. When queried they said - but in Las Vegas they empty the minibar and often trash the rooms. I insisted in paying the charge in cash which I got back on departure. But this is not the way to work especially since having previously stayed at a Hilton (on the same trip) it took me over 10 days to get my cc retention to be released.

I used TMobile in Sicily (mostly central Palermo) early this year and found that download/upload speeds were very bad. Rarely better than 1Mbps, usually around 0.2 Mbps.

What kind of phone? If you have a phone that doesn't have LTE or even 3G data frequencies, it is going to be slow no matter which carrier you use.

Otherwise, T-Mobile US does throttle their data to what they claim is "2G speeds." But it should be a lot faster than 0.2Mbps - closer to 1Mbps (which is certainly not speedy but should be usable for most things).