I have been to over a dozen countries in Europe and only one (Orange in Spain) has given me speeds of over 128 kpbs.

What phones are you using? Much depends upon not only what you are covered for, but also what bands your phone can access. I have found it very, very hard to find a phone that gives full coverage everywhere.

Because Canada and Mexico are not in Europe.

Really? :rolleyes: I was in Canada too although it was my first time using Tmobile Intl Roaming and don't recall whether I got speeds over 128 kpbs. Do you happen to know if you get it 100% of the time?

Getting greedy now. I was super excited to able to use Whatsapp when traveling to all these countries but now I'm realizing uploading pictures to Twitter (and others) can be a major issue. Even transportation apps like Uber or myTaxi.

Out of my recent travels, very disappointed with the networks available in Argentina (Buenos Aires, Mendoza) and Chile (Santiago). Spain (Madrid) did much better.

WhatsApp you can use. But uploading photos takes a lot of time at 128 kpbs. Facebook is almost unusable when traveling due to photos attempting to download. Uber is usable but takes a long time to load map and location. Once it loads - it works fine.

And I agree - for some reason I'm finding some of the faster speeds in Spain. Weird that.

Things changed in the past few months.
https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-23332

Forgot to post my experience with the new Simple Choice North America but I just got back from PVR and had LTE everywhere I went including a couple miles out into the Bahia de Banderas. Also had 3G show & work well on my phone in a couple areas where the coverage map showed no coverage. So that was a nice surprise!

At the resort where I stayed & along the Malecon I was stopped a couple of times by fellow Americans who wanted to be good Samaritans and let me know it would be way too expensive to use my phone in Mexico. I laughed, said its free with T-Mobile and got some interesting reactions. I was quite literally a walking, talking billboard for T-Mobile all week long.

They changed it in late July. You have to actually switch plans (same price, but you get the better Canada/Mexico service). I didn't realize that was required until I landed in YUL and got a text about high speed data passes and $0.20/minute calls.

I called 611, and 10 minutes later, I had full speed data.

With the North America plan, you are never throttled in Canada. That doesn't mean you're always going to get amazing speeds, since it depends on the network and your signal strength. But that's the same as how a Rogers subscriber could have poor speeds because Rogers has poor coverage in an area.

Ahh, very cool. If you're North America travel mostly then - I can see how this would be best. For me, it's mostly US and Int'l (with sporadic Canada/Mexico). So once my Google Fi invite clears I'm likely off to try them.

Any disadvantages to Simple Choice North America Plan?
 

Are there any disadvantages to switching over to the North American plan? The only I can imagine is that your data usage while in Canada or Mexico counts toward your monthly allowance.

For instance, if you're only getting 3G (or less) speeds while in Canada, that data usage still counts toward your high speed data allowance. On the old plan, it wouldn't.

Thanks.

That does not make sense. You are saying you did facetime on 2g?

There are no downsides unless your account has a legacy plan or promotional add-on service. For instance, about a year ago T-Mobile was offering a Family Stateside International add-on for $10/month per account. There are also some legacy unlimited data add-ons that would go away if you migrate the account to the North American plan. If you don't have any of those, however, then you get more by switching.

Good point - now thinking about it. Not on mine, nieces apparently did theirs while on roaming free on TW Mobile & SKTel with their iPhone 6+ (running iOS 9, possibly with the WiFi Assist ??) - they're mostly on a faster 3G connection & kept it brief ... aren't sure if some of that was on fast WiFi networks in the hotel - I know that on my 5s, the Seoul Novotel Ambassador's broadband benchmarked at 115MB/80MB speed, pure joy to do things on that connection.

It's very possible that they're not on cellular data but doing that over WiFi data on the hotel's network. Initially, they couldn't connect & they had to call T-Mo & something was switched on/enabled & they're good for the remainder of the 2 weeks trip.

Family and many friends in Canada make it the best choice for me, as I go back every 4-6 weeks or so for several days.

But the slow data in the rest of the world is certainly nice too, even though I use it less often.