10:15 AM – Competition between U.S. wireless carriers is growing even more, especially with T-Mobile introducing new plans that really shake things up. According to T-Mobile’s press release, the company is now making international data roaming available to all customers, at no extra charge.
Telco’s CEO Legere says “the truth is that the industry’s been charging huge fees for data roaming. But what’s most surprising is that no one’s called them out – until now.” It’s true that wireless carriers charge ridiculous amount to have international service. It would be so much cheaper to buy a local sim card and use the service there, however, that’s another reason why U.S. telco’s lock their phones to make sure their customers don’t hop to a competitor and are forced to use highly charged international services.
Starting October 31, T-Mobile is looking to change things up. The company will now be making 2G data roaming available to all individual and business customers on T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan, and will automatically be enrolled in unlimited 2G data and texting in 100+ supported Simple Global countries, at no extra charge, of course. You won’t have to worry about switching things over or anything since these changes will take place automatically.
This is very good news for those who often travel internationally. While the carrier said it’s 2G data and it’s not very fast, it is suitable for services like iMessage on your iPhone, checking twitter, Facebook update and such.
T-Mobile started to really shake things up when it initiated its UNcarrier plan. AT&T and Verizon almost immediately followed suit when T-Mobile introduced the JUMP plan. It’s really good to see that at least one wireless carrier is looking to change things. It’s really a matter of survival for T-Mobile because of heavy competition from AT&T and Verizon.
You can watch a video from T-Mobile here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LInAyNmblqw
Now lets see how other wireless carriers respond to this. What do you think?
