4 ms·

Why not T-Mobile?

sithadmin 8y ago
Fi negotiated better terms for international roaming with TMO than TMO gives its own customers. TMO customers are rate-throttled abroad; Fi is not.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  But I can get a TMO customer rep on the phone in under 60 seconds. And just did, moments ago, to get an unlock code for an iPhone I sent with a friend who moved out of the US. Trade offs!
buf 8y ago
2G speeds: https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global
mcrae 8y ago
TMO only gives 2G internationally which, while it doesn’t sound terrible, it ends up being unusable in practice. Your experience may vary though I guess.
- andrewvc 8y ago
  Yes, can confirm. I can't actually load a webpage on their '2G' service anytime I travel to europe. I suspect that their partners in europe throttle with an algorithm so aggressive it flat-out breaks TCP.
  - reificator 8y ago
    > I can't actually load a webpage on their '2G' service anytime I travel to europe Remember when web pages were measured in kilobytes? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
- teraflop 8y ago
  T-Mobile's throttling does a great job of highlighting how bloated a lot of modern websites have gotten. The last time I tried using it overseas, text-heavy sites like HN loaded almost as fast as normal. Reddit was mostly usable, but certain subreddits were painfully slow due to image-heavy custom styles. But try to load an article from a typical news website, and the connection would time out before it managed to render anything.
  - chris11 8y ago
    It's not a horrible solution though. I'm kind of cheap, I don't want to pay for unlimited data. So I have an inexpensive plan with T-Mobile that gets throttled. But I can still have some internet access for free once I go over my limit.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  That's accurate. You can however pay for international 3G via their "One Plus" upgrade package if you wish, which makes it at least usable.
  - mvid 8y ago
    It’s not true 3G. It shows up in your tab bar as 3G, but it is throttled to 2x what the 2G is, something like .25 Mbps. It makes it marginally useful, but nowhere close to Fi. I’m saying this as someone who runs Fi on an iPhone, using it in a half broken hacky way is still superior to TMo
ForTheTimeBeing 8y ago
My wife and I just traveled to Korea and Japan for the better part of December. And I have a Google Fi plan while she is with T-mobile. My service was superior in several ways: 1. Better and more reliable coverage 2. Roaming surcharges for my (Google Fi) calls where less (albeit, nominally so) at $0.20/min vs $0.25/min 3. While she had some problems enabling her data, the transition of my service in this respect was absolutely seamless (and as just fast as here in the States) 4. Importantly, Google Fi supports tethering abroad whereas T-mobile does not
- atomical 8y ago
  I'm a T-Mobile customer. I use EasyTether to tether wherever I am.
- disiplus 8y ago
  wtf USA, blocking tethering in roaming.

Why not T-Mobile?

Fi negotiated better terms for international roaming with TMO than TMO gives its own customers. TMO customers are rate-throttled abroad; Fi is not.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
But I can get a TMO customer rep on the phone in under 60 seconds. And just did, moments ago, to get an unlock code for an iPhone I sent with a friend who moved out of the US. Trade offs!

buf 8y ago

2G speeds: https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global

mcrae 8y ago

TMO only gives 2G internationally which, while it doesn’t sound terrible, it ends up being unusable in practice. Your experience may vary though I guess.

andrewvc 8y ago
Yes, can confirm. I can't actually load a webpage on their '2G' service anytime I travel to europe. I suspect that their partners in europe throttle with an algorithm so aggressive it flat-out breaks TCP.
- reificator 8y ago
  > I can't actually load a webpage on their '2G' service anytime I travel to europe Remember when web pages were measured in kilobytes? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
teraflop 8y ago
T-Mobile's throttling does a great job of highlighting how bloated a lot of modern websites have gotten. The last time I tried using it overseas, text-heavy sites like HN loaded almost as fast as normal. Reddit was mostly usable, but certain subreddits were painfully slow due to image-heavy custom styles. But try to load an article from a typical news website, and the connection would time out before it managed to render anything.
- chris11 8y ago
  It's not a horrible solution though. I'm kind of cheap, I don't want to pay for unlimited data. So I have an inexpensive plan with T-Mobile that gets throttled. But I can still have some internet access for free once I go over my limit.
Someone1234 8y ago
That's accurate. You can however pay for international 3G via their "One Plus" upgrade package if you wish, which makes it at least usable.
- mvid 8y ago
  It’s not true 3G. It shows up in your tab bar as 3G, but it is throttled to 2x what the 2G is, something like .25 Mbps. It makes it marginally useful, but nowhere close to Fi. I’m saying this as someone who runs Fi on an iPhone, using it in a half broken hacky way is still superior to TMo

ForTheTimeBeing 8y ago

My wife and I just traveled to Korea and Japan for the better part of December. And I have a Google Fi plan while she is with T-mobile. My service was superior in several ways: 1. Better and more reliable coverage 2. Roaming surcharges for my (Google Fi) calls where less (albeit, nominally so) at $0.20/min vs $0.25/min 3. While she had some problems enabling her data, the transition of my service in this respect was absolutely seamless (and as just fast as here in the States) 4. Importantly, Google Fi supports tethering abroad whereas T-mobile does not

atomical 8y ago
I'm a T-Mobile customer. I use EasyTether to tether wherever I am.
disiplus 8y ago
wtf USA, blocking tethering in roaming.