100% Sure, but why would you use text messages when you have a huge number of free texting services?

Whatsapp, Line, FB...

Good choice. While in Italy or England you will be roaming. That is not the dirty word it once was. Both countries have extensive and excellent mobile service. When you arrive in either country, you will receive a text message from T mobile telling you welcome to the United Kingdom and info that calls cosr $0.20 jper minute etc. The name of the local carrier you are roaming on will be visible. In Italy, for example it might be TIM. In the United Kingdom, it might be EE UK or whatever. For the most part in those two countries, it usually does't matter. Not necessary at this point to go through a whole song and dance of how to manually choose a roaming carrier.

One caveat. In general up till now, roaming data has been somewhat slow. T Mobile had a special this summer for high speed data in those two countries among others. No indication that it will be extended but we'll have to see. But while you are in your hotel, there is a good chance you will get free wifi and there are many hot spots I know of in the UK (Mickey D, Starbucs, Pret a manger) so you can always pop in if the data is too slow.

Your friend will pay for texting to your us number (he or she dials +1 followed by your area code and number) to send a text. He or she will pay whatever his or her carrier charges for international texts which is totally dependent on his or her plan. You pay nothng to receive or send texts. To send a text while you are in Britain to your friend assuming he or she is in Britain you can use +44 prefix followed by his or her local number omitting the lead 0 if there is one or by dialing the number with the lead zero and omitting the +44 but it's easier to program all your numbers with the + and the country code omitting the zero.

Hope that helps.

The high speed roaming promo is suppose to be July and August right?

Yeah it would be great if they extended it or made it permanent.

Hell I'd get a SIM for my iPad too in that case.

Can someone update the wiki with the promo dates? I am going to Europe in September and was counting on this...

Just look at this page:

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


It would be great if they can do this all the time but they're paying those other carriers something for roaming rights.

I used a ton of data in Greece in just 10-12 days so I don't see this happening.

A buddy of mine who I went to college with now works for T-Mobile as an Engineer at one of their regional offices.

I asked him if the Unlimited European High Speed Data might stick around, he had no idea but said at least what he heard was that it was a test to see what the costs might look like.

He said he thinks most likely it will come and go, maybe around large tourist holidays like Xmas/New Years, Summer Vacation, but probably no go all year.

I'd be interested in your Fi vs T-Mo experience. I'm headed to London & Athens in September and am curious to find out how it goes. Since t-Mo is currently doing the summer unleashed promotion, it would be interesting to see how the two compare when they are both unthrottled.

By this time next year, roaming within EU on EU carriers SIMs is suppose to be eliminated.

It's suppose to allow "reasonable" amount of data roaming for people visiting one country from another.

Wonder if T-Mobile USA could take advantage of the elimination or reduction in roaming costs.

Just to be contrary minded. If telcoms are going to lose revenue on one hand (droppping of roaming charges for intra European data), they have to make it up somewhere else like not allowing carriers outside Europe to use their facilities to lower their revenues. Like I say, who really knows.

What a coincidence. I have a friend who is a senior engineering something-or-another in Bellevue. He has been dropping hints to me about a big announcement before the end of summer/before iOS 10 release in early-September and he said its data related (of course because what isn't these days?).

All along I suspected it had something to do with the iOS 10 integration of VoIP calling into the native phone dialer on iPhones and the release of Google's new video calling & VoIP apps. I had been thinking possibly T-Mobile is killing data charges for VoIP and video chat apps. (I was specifically talking to my Engineering friend about phone calls from iPad over cellular and their effect on data consumption - which they are VoIP calls - when my friend started dropping hints about upcoming announcements and data.)

The summer free high speed Europe data promo is also coming to an end soon. So it's like the perfect timing for another major Uncarrier move!

And now I see T-Mobile has a conference call scheduled for Thursday (8/18) morning and a video "news release" with John Legere was filmed this week. Hmmmm.

*Edit - the more I think about it...video releases from Legere are usually updates/improvements to current features. New features are usually on-stage mega-events. So I'm wondering if the free high speed data promo will be continued/extended/unleashed tomorrow and not an announcement about VoIP and video chat. Not sure.*

It's already live and announced.

http://www.t-mobile.com/

Basically, they are doing away with data plans, effective Sept 6th, and going to all unlimited data. However, no indication this has anything to do with extending LTE in Europe.

Regards

So I guess we have to assume that as of 01 September 2016, we revert to slow data while roaming in Europe with hefty fees for lte data there?

Got a question that I don't know if anyone can speak of. Have a Galaxy 4S on a plan supposedly with international coverage. On two past trips to Jamaica found every time I tried to dial out to the US I would get a Jamaican accent asking me about entering my mailbox #. On a recent trip to Haiti every time I dialed out to the US I would get a recording in French Creole. What the heck it was saying I will never know.

Now planning a trip to Vietnam this fall, I don't want to run into the same problem of not being able to dial or receive calls from the U.S. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem might be, the T-Mobile people are pretty clueless.

Thanks!

Hail mary here: Maybe it's how you have the #'s stored in your phone? You'd probably want to store it with a + 1 and area code, i.e. +1-212-555-1234.

Did you make sure the the dialing string began with +1?