I just spent 8 days in France, mostly in the Languedoc. I had my cell provider set to automatic. I connected to Orange most of the time, but also connected to SFR and Buoygues. Interestingly, sometimes I connected to Orange while at the same time and in the same location my son connected to SFR. Data was sometimes slow, but generally worked well enough. I did not notice whether there was a significant difference in data speeds between the 3 carriers.

OK good to know it's available in some places.

IPAD Exclusive 5 GB for $10 for 5 months
 

As the thread starter, it seemed best to post this question here after doing extensive searching and not finding anything. (probably wrong search terms, but whatever).

New Ipad mini 4 with the Apple sim. There is a choice of the 5 GB for $10 for 5 months T mo account. I am most interested in international data, with a minimal amount of payout for domestic data. Does anyone know if this account will allow international data like a simple choice $20 or $35 a month plan?

Thanks in advance for the abuse

I doubt it would work. The Tmobile Q and A says it is only available on the Simple Choice Plan. Also, I believe that the plan with the Apple SIM is a prepaid plan, and it is not good on any prepaid plans.

On the other hand, if you have a phone with Simple Choice - tethering works while roaming internationally.

Does it really? I thought tethering isn't allowed internationally. So even at slow speeds I can tether another phone to mine? Or a iPad?

Tethering works and it's barely good enough.

In theory, the tethering should be at the same speed as the data stream the phone gets.

So if you tether to a laptop, it is going to seem very slow, as a laptop we browser is going to use more data, in general, than one in a phone/

Presumably tethering to an ipad would be better, as probably the ipad uses less data than a laptop, but more than a phone.

Recent Trip to NL and ZA - General Observations
 

My first time using the international roaming - and I was pleasantly surprised at how much worked, even at the slow speeds. In no particular order:

• The least functional thing was the web browser. Even when loading mobile optimized pages it was annoyingly slow. This was the biggest surprise.
• Maps worked great - a little slow to load the first time, but not that slow, and once it cached the local maps it was close to perfect;
• Uber worked fine, just like home, no noticeable delay
• The New York Times app was great - it downloads the whole site, which can take a while, but once it is downloaded it is all there
• The biggest surprise was how well the Whatsapp Voip worked. The connection from both ZA and NL to the US was great, no gaps, no distortion. I was surprised that it also worked well with my wife who was travelling with me, we could talk to each other on a good connection even though the Tmobile VPN meant it was bounding back and forth to the US a few times. This is great if you are travelling with someone, you avoid those 40 cent per minute calls (20 cents per minute for each phone on the call.)
• As I suspected, if you just do a speed test using the closest server you get inaccurate numbers because of the VPN - the signal is bouncing back and forth to the US. So, when I ran the Ookla speedtest using the default POP in the Netherlands, I got a ping of 300 ms with a download speed of .03 Mbps and upload speed of .07 Mbps. Forcing the app to use a POP in the Chicago area, the ping was 156 ms, with an upload of .12 Mbps and a download speed of .09 Mbps.
• The Netherlands connection was LTE - in ZA it was HSPA or HSPA +, and I believe that the ping times were larger in ZA but I did not make a note of it.
• I am accustomed to buying local SIMs - and it would have been easy to pick one up in ZA. But the free data worked fine for most things, so I didn't bother with the local SIM.
• I used the built-in Google Voice VOIP to call the US - I listened to and left a Voicemail which sounded fine, but I did not speak to anyone.
• Uploading photos to Instagram or Whatsapp was much faster than I expected - I didn't time it, but I would say about 30 seconds, certainly less than a minute. I assume Facebook would have similar timing.

In the past month, I've been in Dubai, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, back to Malaysia, and now I'm about to head to the UK. In each country, as soon as I turn the phone back on, I get an automatic text from T-Mobile:

"Welcome to (country). Your T-Mobile plan gives you unlimited data at 2G speeds, calls at 20 cents/min and free texts. To purchase high speed data please visit http://t-mo.co/4G-Data"

In the UAE and in India, I got an additional auto-text that read:


"Free T-Mobile Msg: Unlimited web included as part of your global coverage. To purchase high speed data please visit http://t-mo.co/4G-Data"

And only in India, I got a third auto-text:

"Free T-Mobile Msg: Welcome to India. Unlimited text incl with your global coverage. Talk $0.20/min. More info http://t-mo.co/tc"


While I was in India, I purchased a dual-SIM OnePlus X off of Amazon India. I used that for when I needed a local SIM. I should have actually transferred my T-Mobile SIM to it and just added the local SIM to it anywhere I was, but I was lazy. So I ended up being a two-handset guy :) I purchased a local SIM in India (Vodafone 4G) and in Malaysia (TuneTalk 3G), which both went into the OnePlus X.

In India, T-Mobile roamed on Airtel. In Malaysia, it roamed on MAXIS. I don't remember what it roamed on in Indonesia or in Singapore since I used my OnePlus X and my Malaysian number to do everything. Every once in a while, in India, I would have to make it re-find the mobile network, but that was generally when I was out in the sticks (e.g. Agra).

When I was India, from time to time, on my T-Mobile handset, I would have problems connecting to Uber. This happened mainly in Hyderabad and in Delhi, but otherwise it worked great. When it would drop to 2G of course web browsing was slow, but not unmanageable. Whatsapp worked like a charm anywhere and everywhere I went, no matter which country I was in.

All in all, thus far, I would count T-Mobile's Simple Choice Plan roaming global data coverage as a WIN.

I have been in Greece since 3/17 and I get COSMOTE coverage. So far, coverage in Athens and Santorini have been good. Sometimes web browsing is slow but overall, I'm satisfied with speed for Google map, email and web browsing. I'll have to try it in other countries but in Greece I give ^.

How is the Wifi in the hotels?

Good enough that you don't want to get a prepaid SIM?

Is this pretty useable? Mainly in regards to uber, google, and google maps.

I'm contemplating porting my number here for a month or two. I will have a local number as well, but this sounds more convienent than swapping SIMs every time I land in a new country.

I used it recently in the Netherlands and South Africa and was surprised how usable it was.

I used Uber all the time, as well as Google Maps. A little slow if you are paying attention, but not bad at all.

What was surprisingly slow was web browsing - it was noticeable slow. Google will be slow, but it is functional.

What was surprising is how well photo uploads to Whatsapp and Hangouts went. Also, I regularly used the VOIP functionality in Whatsapp to speak with my wife who was travelling with me when we went our own ways, as well as to speak with people back in the US - perfect connections. This was a surprise as well.

Someone elsewhere postulated that we associate these type of slow speeds with crappy connections/bad service. When we get speeds like this domestically, it is not a solid connection.

However, when travelling abroad, we are getting throttled speeds over solid connections.

I can tell you that in South Africa (where we spent the bulk of our time) I could have easily bought a local SIM - and I actually like the geeky pleasure of setting it up. However, I didn't bother with the local SIM.

If you're trying to improve web browsing speeds, you might want to turn on Data Compression in Chrome:

[Chrome] : three dots(options): Settings : Data Saver ON.

I find that in US/CA/MX, it's faster with it OFF, but if you're sipping on a small pipe, this might help.

Did that before I left - the slowness I described was with that setting on. But definitely a good idea to enable it.