T-Mobile's International Roaming Plan: How It Compares

T-Mobile's radical new international roaming plan offers free texting and data in 100 countries. Compared against the other major U.S. carriers, it delivers much better value, especially for heavy texters and data users. In some cases, it even outpaces the rates offered by the prepaid local SIM cards you might pick up at an airport on your way into a foreign city, although T-Mobile's data rates remain higher than local operators.

About 15 million Americans travel abroad annually, according to Ovum analyst Jan Dawson, so T-Mobile is pitching for a pretty small crowd. Roaming with your U.S. phone generally works for shorter trips, because you keep your U.S. number. That's great when most of the calls you're receiving are from other Americans, but not so great if, say, you're spending three months in France; you don't want your French friends to have to dial a U.S. number every time they need to reach you.

Of T-Mobile's "free" roaming services, the only one that's truly free is texting, although that can be a big deal. The company's free data is slow EDGE, so you'll want to pay for a "speed pack" to get your data up to more usable HSPA+ speeds. Calls cost 20 cents per minute.

Still, though, those calling, texting, and data rates are much cheaper than you'll find roaming with the other U.S. carriers. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon also have a complex and sometimes baffling set of "international discount plans" that you need to sign up for to get calling rates under a dollar a minute.

T-Mobile vs. Local SIMs
If you're looking for the lowest data rates, you'll still find them by getting a local SIM card in the country to which you're traveling. That option just isn't easy or available for a lot of travelers, though. I've tried to buy local SIMs in several different countries. In the U.K., picking up a Three SIM is dead easy - there's a vending machine at the airport offering 300 minutes, 3,000 texts, and unlimited data for £15.

In Spain, though, I've had trouble finding retailers who speak English or are open on Sundays. In mainland China, I got a SIM whose entire user interface was only in Chinese. The difficulty of navigating cell phone shops in foreign lands keeps the market for roaming SIMs like Telestial, Maxroam, and OneSimCard alive; those brands sell special SIM cards that let you travel to multiple countries at rates generally lower than AT&T's or Verizon's.

T-Mobile's rates are generally better than those roaming SIM providers, although they may not be lower than local operators. Remember, local operators also usually offer free incoming calls and texts, although your friends from the U.S. will be dialing an international number to reach you. The chart below shows how T-Mobile's rates compare to US roaming and a sample of local prepaid plans.