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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

> T-Mobile is the only US based carrier that has reasonable international roaming for data and non-stupid policies.

I find ATT pricing to be okay. I get Canada/Mexico/US for one price, and then if I use my phone internationally, it automatically starts and stops charging $10 per day, up to $100 max per month. If you are just stepping out of North America for a week, the convenience of not having to bother with another SIM or eSIM is not that expensive. I guess the most convenient part is not having to do anything, and just being able to continue using my phone.

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I spent a good chunk of my life spending 1-2 weeks/month every month traveling internationally for work. AT&T has historically been insanely expensive for roaming data. The max is per-country I believe, and it is common for me to be in 2-3 countries in a trip, but even assuming this is truly a max, you just basically said T-Mobile saves me $100/month at minimum with their roaming policies.

https://www.att.com/international/day-pass/

> You will only be charged one daily fee per 24-hour period for International Day Pass, even if you travel to multiple included destinations in the same 24-hour period.

T-Mobile’s max plan does include 5GB international, so that is neat. If I was frequently traveling internationally, I would consider it over ATT.

That's much better than I expected from AT&T. That's great news, actually, and makes it a better offer than the equivalent from Verizon (Travel Pass).

This is why I stick with T-Mobile. When I go abroad, it just works and is just included in my regular plan. I haven't been charged extra to use my phone abroad in years. And it isn't even shite service anymore, I can typically use 5G/LTE just fine.

Even $10 a day can be STEEP when you're gone for >2 weeks at a time.

> And it isn't even shite service anymore, I can typically use 5G/LTE just fine.

I had T-Mobile before switching to Verizon and am now back on T-Mobile. Ironically, my experience has been my service quality on T-Mobile is better when roaming in Europe than it is when at home in the US. I believe this is because T-Mobile is an off-shoot of Deutsch Telekom, and therefore makes use of DT and partner towers in Europe which have exceptionally good coverage. Verizon used to have a similar relationship to Vodafone, but when I recently roamed on Verizon in Europe, I was no longer on Vodafone towers and got shoddy service at a higher cost (and with issues upon returning to the US).

I primarily ditched T-Mobile due to service quality / coverage in the US, but I've decided to put up with it because they were the first to adopt Wi-Fi calling in the US, and all of their services work perfectly over Wi-Fi and I pretty much always have Wi-Fi in the US.

Same with Verizon: $10/day.

But.... Story Time: I recently switched to Mint, and there is no international (outside of Canada and Mexico, I think?). So had to find a phone store when I recently went to Ireland, and they are a lot less ubiquitous than in their neighbor to the north and east (UK). I had to take a 10 minute walk down to the town centre where I expected the little grocer to have some sim cards, but he directed me down the road to a larger chain grocery. When they didn't have them, I was directed to another town, so then I had to hop on bus for a few kilometers to the next town that had an indoor shopping mall where there was a Vodafone store. All of this with no network connection because I had no sim card.

I forgot how hard travel used to be.

> Same with Verizon: $10/day.

Verizon's Travel Pass is $10 per instance, which can be more than once per day. A Travel Pass is active for up to 24 hours, but includes a limited amount of data, at which point you must purchase another one. Verizon Travel Pass also does not have a monthly maximum. Based on the link provided in the parallel thread, the AT&T offer is better than the Verizon Travel Pass.

I had Verizon during a recent family vacation and ran into issues with this, which was one motivating factor for switching back to T-Mobile.

GF and I went to Iceland in June. She's on Verizon, I am on T-Mobile.

We entered Iceland airspace and I got a nice text from T-Mobile "Welcome to Iceland, enjoy your trip here's unlimited talk, text and data"

My GF got "You are out of the US to use your device it's $20/day for talk, text and 1GB of data"

By the end of the week trip, my cellphone bill was $10 more than normal. Her's was an additional $200.

I just spent half a year in Canada, and my T-Mobile bill was no different. I was limited to 5GB/data/month, but other than that it was just like being in the US.

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