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T-Mobile Now Offers Unlimited Talk, Text and 4G LTE Data in Canada and Mexico at No Additional Charge
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"Coverage in Canada includes Banff National Park, Bay of Fundy, Brampton, Burnaby, Calgary, Edmonton, Gatineau, Halifax, Hamilton, Kitchener, Laval, London, Longueuil, Markham, Mississauga, Montreal, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, Quebec City, Regina, Richmond, Saskatoon, St Johns, Surrey, Toronto, Vancouver, Vaughan, Victoria, Whistler, Windsor and Winnipeg."
What?! Where's Wawa, Flin Flon, St. Louis du Ha! Ha!, Vulcan? Actually kudos to T-Mobile for doing such a thing and I hope the Canadian carriers learn a thing or two from this (but probably not).
What?! Where's Wawa, Flin Flon, St. Louis du Ha! Ha!, Vulcan? Actually kudos to T-Mobile for doing such a thing and I hope the Canadian carriers learn a thing or two from this (but probably not).
Where are they adding the towers or are they just converting their existing towers to 4G LTE ?
T-Mobile already offers free unlimited 4G data worldwide (includes most european countries). I was in Europe a few weeks back and had 4G the entire time, didn't have to add anything extra to my $36 a month plan. It was great!
Sorry to hear that. T-Mobile isn't a big enough company to really provide service outside of major city areas. Since that isn't their league, they are taking other routes to try to secure their validity in the market (like these un-carrier moves). I have always lived within city limits (urban or suburban area) and have always had 4-5 bars of LTE where I live and travel, around the area.
Andres Cantu: On several recent visits to Tijuana, and to Ensenada (both on Pacific Coast in Baja California) My wife and I seem to always get Movistar. And up until now has been p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slooooooooow 2G. (slow enough that most websites actually time out before loading and Google/Apple maps take forever to redraw).... will be going again in September so can't wait to try 4G.
Never mind, I think it's Movistar since they also recently announced free roaming in the United States, probably with T-mobile. Telcel is too big (and did not let me roam when I traveled to Mexico), and Iusacell was bought by AT&T.
Another game changer move by T-Mobile. I may have to consider switching from AT&T if they don't have a similar plan.
Yeah, I noticed that too when I traveled to Monterrey. I just posted this:
It's not heavily throttled, it's full 4G+ speed. Compared to LTE it's not as fast. 4G is way faster than 3G. 4G imo is a good standard, and for international travel I don't think it's bad at all. Works fine for google maps and things like that too. LTE just loads facebook snappier
but it's true, LTE for Canada and Mexico is great! Imo, I don't know how many LTE towers Mexico would have to begin with, so maybe it wouldn't matter so much there.
It's not heavily throttled, it's full 4G+ speed. Compared to LTE it's not as fast. 4G is way faster than 3G. 4G imo is a good standard, and for international travel I don't think it's bad at all. Works fine for google maps and things like that too. LTE just loads facebook snappier
I don't know what plan your on but I've used the T-Mobile free data roaming in Japan, Spain, Germany and France and it's throttled at edge speeds (or at least was in during my most recent trip in late May).
Maybe you're referring to the paid option? I do know some countries weren't being throttled correctly when they were first rolling the roaming out but that was before I switched and has been fixed. I've used intl roam on AT&T via paid and it was much, much, much faster and I'm sure t-mobiles paid option is similar in speeds.
I'd be happy with free 4g (1 Mb+) speeds
"Mobile Without Borders"
I'm pretty sure that stopping with Canada and Mexico means there are still borders.
I'm pretty sure that stopping with Canada and Mexico means there are still borders.
This is great! I never quite understood why we had to pay to call to Canada, if they are under the same 1 country code, very easy to end up calling a Canadian number when thinking you were calling a number in the US. Plus voice and LTE data roaming in Canada and Mexico, for no extra charge. Hard to find any negative angle to the news, that's why I think some people (perhaps jealous) are throwing the coverage issues.
I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile around mid January of this year. I was with AT&T over the years because they were the first and only (for a while) to offer iPhones. AT&T has better coverage, than T-Mobile, but the gap is closing fast. I wouldn't let past experience inform your opinion of the current T-Mobile, and as T-Mobile continues deploying the lowest frequencies they got a few months back they will improve in building penetration, which is a common complaint, and a fair one so far.
Anyway, my experience so far this months is good and I am not looking back to go to AT&T. T-Mobile is much more fun if you can consider a cell phone company fun. I like how they are making AT&T be on their toes. Make no mistake, AT&T hasn't done any innovation or anything in favor of their customers for years that hasn't been forced by T-Mobile (perhaps Sprint too). Before this fight started AT&T was basically finding ways to extract more money giving less to customers.
For me, one of the main reasons to switch was because they throttled me on a grandfathered unlimited plan once that I went over their not clearly advertised data limit, that after years of paying full price for a fraction of the data. On a call to customer service they refused to remove the throttle for the rest of the month. That was it, bye bye AT&T, I don't miss you
I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile around mid January of this year. I was with AT&T over the years because they were the first and only (for a while) to offer iPhones. AT&T has better coverage, than T-Mobile, but the gap is closing fast. I wouldn't let past experience inform your opinion of the current T-Mobile, and as T-Mobile continues deploying the lowest frequencies they got a few months back they will improve in building penetration, which is a common complaint, and a fair one so far.
Anyway, my experience so far this months is good and I am not looking back to go to AT&T. T-Mobile is much more fun if you can consider a cell phone company fun. I like how they are making AT&T be on their toes. Make no mistake, AT&T hasn't done any innovation or anything in favor of their customers for years that hasn't been forced by T-Mobile (perhaps Sprint too). Before this fight started AT&T was basically finding ways to extract more money giving less to customers.
For me, one of the main reasons to switch was because they throttled me on a grandfathered unlimited plan once that I went over their not clearly advertised data limit, that after years of paying full price for a fraction of the data. On a call to customer service they refused to remove the throttle for the rest of the month. That was it, bye bye AT&T, I don't miss you
Sadly enough this plan IS a loyalty one with Virgin. I think if I can stand waiting the extra few months for my contract to be up (instead of the early upgrade) so might switch to Telus. Virgin calls this a loyalty plan but it's not like I'm getting anything more for what I pay, it's just that the plan I'm on normally costs $15 more.
I do know you usually get better deals by having multiple lines but unfortunately my fiancé's contract runs about 6 months later than mine so lining them up in order to bundle might prove tricky.
I'm on a family plan with AT&T. We pay $240 a month for 5 iPhone lines. 3 of those lines are on contract and the phones are subsidized, the other two lines are not on contract and are "bring your own phone" but we pay less a month for them. We have unlimited talk and text and 6GB shared data with rollover, so whatever data we don't use gets rolled over to the next month. Pretty good deal I think.
If all the lines were unsubsidized, I could get another $45 a month deducted from the bill. It would be $195 a month. But we like our bi-yearly upgrades.
I cross the border to Tijuana weekly and what I do is I change the carrier manually to Telcel, since it automatically went to Movistar. Movistar is awfully slow as you say despite displaying "3G" (Google Maps or Uber wouldn't load). Telcel actually shows me the signal as being LTE, and although it is obviously throttled I can at least have some basic data functionality on my phone.
I don't know if my phone detected that I was switching to Telcel frequently but now when I cross the border I automatically get switched over to Telcel.
I don't know what plan your on but I've used the T-Mobile free data roaming in Japan, Spain, Germany and France and it's throttled at edge speeds (or at least was in during my most recent trip in late May).
Maybe you're referring to the paid option? I do know some countries weren't being throttled correctly when they were first rolling the roaming out but that was before I switched and has been fixed. I've used intl roam on AT&T via paid and it was much, much, much faster and I'm sure t-mobiles paid option is similar in speeds.
I'd be happy with free 4g (1 Mb+) speeds
Trust me, I would have noticed if it was Edge speed lol. My speeds were between 2-5 MB most of the time. I was in Belgium and Holland (with a transfer in Dublin). It could be that we were accidentally given the international plan because I did call up and inquire about it beforehand and almost purchased it so maybe customer support accidentally triggered it or something. Either way I didn't pay a dime and the speed was completely useable lol. My LTE is like 15-20 MB/s at home but anything above 3 is usually fine. The big problem with Edge is the speed is so slow certain applications like Maps and stuff just doesn't work. It's not stable. 3G and above works great. LTE is a commodity.
Did you turn on Data Roam? I think I remember it being very bad until I turned that on - but I turned that on almost immediately.
Three do something a bit like this. It's called "Feel at Home" and your tariff is unchanged if you go to a bunch of European countries, and some further away too http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home#dest
Though their unlimited options shrink down to 6000 minutes and 4gb I believe (edit: it's 25gb). Three are the nearest we have to the US T-Mobile. But I'm also okay with not paying as much as US networks charge! They're all so ludicrously expensive.
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I have 5 No-credit check lines with the 2.5GB each.. will I be included in this "Mobile without Boarders" plan?
Now if T-Mobile would expand their US network. I've tried them from time to time on prepaid, and anywhere I've been the coverage has been terrible, they're probably fine if you never leave a big city, but once you get away from a city the coverage drops much faster than AT&T or Verizon.
Yep they're not going to be able to compete with rural coverage, so they don't. Instead they focus on increasing speeds in their developed urban areas.
Damn, primary usage has to be in the us. Telcel here is horrible and expensive. Waiting to see what att does with iusacell but if this open up to us it would be a step in the right direction. Guess they would catch us if we tried only using it from here.