Today T-Mobile announced that its Simple Global Uncarrier move is expanding to cover 20 more countries. That means you can now take your T-Mobile iPhone abroad to anywhere in South America and Europe as well as many other destinations, and not pay any extra for data or texting while you’re there.
Simple Global’s most notable addition today (according to T-Mo) is the Bahamas, a preferred destination for 2 million Americans each year. As well as the Bahamas, T-Mobile has expanded to include Haiti, Monaco, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, Sark, Isle of Man, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. John Legere, of course, was more than happy to aim a jab at his competition in the press release:
Simple Global takes aim at the carriers’ practice of jacking up their customers’ rates as soon as they step across a border. Take a trip with Verizon’s International Travel Preferred Pricing, and you could pay a staggering $250 for just one gig of data, based on their published rate of $25 per 100 MB. And that’s with an international add-on in qualified countries. If you’re unlucky enough to need to travel elsewhere or forget the add-on, they could hit you for $2.05 per megabyte—which works out to a mind-boggling $2099.20 for a single gigabyte of data.
“We’ve just made your traveling even easier in 20 more destinations around the world, expanding Simple Global to cover all of Europe and all of South America,” said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. “The carriers have made billions overcharging consumers who just want to stay connected overseas, and we’ve changed all that! Today, we made it even simpler to text, search or keep up on social media in a total of 145 countries and destinations, all at no extra cost!”
Since launching Simple Global around 2 years ago, the carrier has seen its customers use 140 times more data than they did before international roaming was included in their plans. That’s despite the fact that users are limited to an average download speed of just 128Kpbs when they’re traveling abroad. T-Mobile‘s full list of countries and destinations has now been updated to reflect today’s expansion.
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My cousin used this when she was traveling in South Korea last fall and loved it. Although the data speed was awful(because it can only use their 3G signal despite having 4G LTE all around her), she was able to text with no problem – which was a life saver for her. No need to rent sims or phones when traveling. Awesome.
I don’t actually know if it was 3G or 2G speed… but it was painfully slow.
It’s really an excellent perk of the T-mobile plan if you travel even a little outside the U.S. territory.
In Austria and Germany it has been fast enough for me to use all social media apps. I could easily upload photos. Videos, naturally, didn’t work too well…
Note that you’ll often see the “LTE” on your phone if your phone supports the local frequencies, but your speed will still be capped.