Raving About Roaming, T-Mobile

You've may noticed that my blog is resolutely non-commercial, I'm not making any money for all the content that's posted here. You won't see any pop up ads or subtle advertising. I keep things positive and mainly focus on talking about things we enjoyed doing. Yes there are recommendations for services but I didn't get anything in return. This is a labour of love, a way to say thank you to all the others who have provided such useful information for us on the net. But sometimes a deal is so good you just want to tell everyone about it, I guess there are times when you want to provide free advertising for a product.

For years we've been big exponents of traveling with an unlocked telephone and buying local sims in each country we arrive in. This has worked for us all over the world, in Bangkok, Sri Lanka, France, Rome and the UK. Yes, it normally takes a bit of time to find the sim and pick the right plan, but until now it has been by far the easiest and cheapest option when we are traveling. Given the costs we have never considered using our US cell phones to roam abroad. At the end of last year we switch to T-Mobile and their standard plan (we pay $40 each per month) includes free texting internationally and slow data. Yes, completely free and if you need to make a quick call it's 20 cents per minute in and to more than 100 countries. This is a fantastic deal for people like us who are often hopping between various countries. I was just in Dublin for a few days and it was so easy. I don't have to do anything but I could check my email, text D. and make any short calls I needed to.

The data is slow, so this isn't a plan for someone who wants to upload lots of photos or spend hours on Facebook but it's adequate for us, checking things online when we are out, Google maps etc.. Obviously we use wifi when we are at home, unfortunately our phones don't have wifi calling but that would be adventitious if it's something you have access to.

This plan has worked for us in Egypt, in France at the beginning of the year, in German airports on stopovers, in Dublin and now in the UK. The sibling doesn't like to text me because he gets dinged with international rates (he's calling our California number after all) but it's easy enough as he emails us instead. Theres a landline in our London flat which simplifies things too.

So, if you are US based and travel to a variety of different places it might be worth checking out T-Mobile, we are really happy with the service.