I've seen my question(s) asked in various places, but never a definitive answer, so I'm calling on the collective experience of posters here: what calls made while roaming are not possible and/or get charged at higher rates?
I'm assuming that calls to 'premium' numbers are either blocked or ridiculously expensive, which is fine, but what about numbers that are intended to be free for callers (1-800, 0800 etc.) -- do they also go through for 20 cents per minute?
Also, does it make any difference whether the number I'm calling is a landline or a mobile/cell/wireless account? If I'm calling the US it obviously won't, as cell numbers use geographic area codes, but that's not the case in many other countries.
I just want to be more confident about what to expect before I start calling German mobile numbers when I'm roaming in Sri Lanka next month... @:-) Thanks in advance for any information (which we can add to the wiki as appropriate).
From what I've seen on my bill so far I'M NOT being charged anything other than the USD 20 cents
Example of detail on this months bill while roaming in the UK and Germany (I masked the destination numbers). Date/Time, Dest #, Call charge type description, (R) = Roaming, # of mins, cost
10/09/14, 11:29 AM 4917xxxx Germany (Telekom) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 2 $0.40
10/09/14, 12:11 PM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 1 $0.20
10/09/14, 12:47 PM 4917xxxx Germany (Telekom) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 1 $0.20
10/09/14, 8:25 PM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 1 $0.20
10/09/14, 8:26 PM (949) 2xxxx Germany (Telekom) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 1 $0.20
10/09/14, 8:26 PM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 2 $0.40
10/10/14, 10:06 AM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 1 $0.20
10/10/14, 10:21 AM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 1 $0.20
10/10/14, 10:29 AM 000000000000000 Incoming to Germany (Telekom) (R) 1 $0.20
10/10/14, 3:57 PM (800) 843xxxx Germany (Telekom) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 16 $3.20
10/10/14, 7:13 PM (949) 2xxxx United Kingdom (Hutchison 3) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 1 $0.20
10/12/14, 4:41 PM (888) 7xxxx United Kingdom (O2) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 3 $0.60
10/13/14, 12:03 PM 3368xxxx United Kingdom (Everything) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 2 $0.40
10/13/14, 12:04 PM 3368xxxx United Kingdom (Everything) to INTERNATIONAL (R) 1 $0.20
Further down my bill I have a better example of calling countries other than US while roaming:
11/04/14, 8:32 AM (416) 5xxxx South Korea (SK Telecom) to Canada (R) 6 $1.20
11/04/14, 9:42 AM (408) 7xxxx South Korea (SK Telecom) to USA (R) 7 $1.40
11/04/14, 6:28 PM 49172xxxx South Korea (SK Telecom) to Germany (R) 4 $0.80
11/04/14, 6:32 PM 336xxxx South Korea (SK Telecom) to France (R) 7 $1.40
11/04/14, 6:45 PM 8180xxxx South Korea (SK Telecom) to Japan (R) 1 $0.20
Nothing other than 20 cents a min charged and no post billing from last 3 months for any surcharges.
Notice on the first batch, ONE 800 number (877) it was charged at 20 cents a min like other calls. You will notice there are mixed in mobile numbers in Germany and France and none got dinged a higher rate.
So safe to say T-Mobile US is eating the cost and doing a flat rate 20 cents a min fairly.
Originally Posted by
alphaod
This thread is very interesting and I guess thanks for posting it up.
I've been wondering if I should switch to T-Mobile to save on the roaming data, but it seems it's not working that well everywhere. I know for LTE roaming your home carrier needs to sign new agreements with the roaming carrier, so I assume T-Mobile USA hasn't done this? This would explain why it works on T-Mobile DE only since it's technically the parent company there is no agreements needed.
I ask this because I currently have AT&T and when I roam it connects to any available network (including LTE) on just about every place I've been to. It even works on cruise ships and you know how restrictive [and expensive] those are. The only issue I have to roaming voice is very expensive, so I forward all my calls to my Skype account which I can answer with via data.
So I've been debating switching over for a while now. I'm current paying $65/month for the data plan, but my roaming voice is like $2/minute.
I have an AT&T MiFi for work which I use as a worst case backup; I've not had a reason to use it other than once in the last month. This WAS NOT working for LTE networks for me in some countries; so YMMV. You can assume T-Mobile US will execute more LTE agrements; but it's essentially moot if 3G is throttled for roaming LTE will get you better network latency but not a huge reason to pay a lot more with AT&T and may ripoff rates for Voice.