Roger Fingas
T-Mobile on Thursday launched a pair of initiatives aimed at American travelers. In the first, the carrier is giving an hour of Gogo in-flight internet service to all domestic U.S. fliers, including what the company calls "those long-abused AT&T and Verizon customers."
The offer is valid only between June 24 and June 26, but should be on over 33,000 flights. T-Mobile first began offering an hour of free Gogo internet on June 13, but only to its own subscribers.
The second gives U.S. residents on the company's Simple Choice plans free unlimited data while traveling in Europe this summer, excluding Andorra. Tethering isn't allowed however, and data speeds may typically be closer to 128 kilobits per second, with higher bandwidth available only available in select locations.
The free European roaming will last from July 1 through August 31.
Recently, the carrier's weekly "T-Mobile Tuesdays" free pizza offering through Domino's was cancelled early, due to overwhelming demand. The company is now using a number of perks to foster subscriber loyalty, among them contests, discounts, giveaways, and even stock options.
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4 Comments
I've been considering Tmo for the past couple months, for a euro trip later this year. From what I could tell, they had always been offering their SimpleChoice customers free data and texting in europe. So I'm confused, this new special "for the summer" seems to imply that the data and txt benefit will end after the summer. Hmmm.
The data in the past was always limited to 2G speeds.
My granddaughter used FaceTime with her friends in the US with the free roaming over her T-Mobile iPhone while driving on the Autobahn. A lot faster than I thought. It was much slower in Argentina.
I've used it in France a lot and it was not as fast as here in the US but still good enough for FaceTime and navigation. The best part is that it picks any of the three major operators (Orange, SFR and Bouygues) so it's practically impossible to run out of coverage. One important thing to note: when you're on WiFi, if your phone supports WiFi calling, calling the US and receiving calls from the US is free.
A friend of mine travels regularly all over the world (India, China...) and loves T-Mobile, this has saved him thousands.