MileValue is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.
Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.
T-Mobile’s basic, contract-free, $50 plan offers free data and text messages in 140+ countries. I have had it for a few years, and I have been happy with it.
Unfortunately the free data abroad is at Edge speeds. Last month, though, T-Mobile announced free 4G data in Europe from July 1 – August 31, 2016.
I’ve had a chance to use the high speed data in Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia over the last few weeks.
In general, I have been very happy with this improved data speed, and I haven’t found the need to buy a local SIM card yet. Unfortunately, as you can see in the above screen shot, my phone says “R” above its signal strength, which just means “roaming,” so I don’t know how much of my data has been Edge, how much 3G, and how much 4G.
It seems like I’ve mostly been on 3G. Most of the time, web pages have loaded at a reasonable speed, but not exactly instantly. Facebook uploads, attaching photos to WhatsApp messages, and viewing attached WhatsApp photos and videos has all been done at a reasonable speed, though certainly one that felt slower than 4G.
These are three of the poorer European countries. In all likelihood, T-Mobile customers in Western European countries are enjoying 4G speeds, but I have been happy enough with the speeds I’ve gotten.
In an effort to make this post more exact, I ran a speed test on my phone in my Sarajevo apartment, and got this reasonable upload speed but abysmal download speed. I can assure you that for most of my trip, my download speed has been much faster.
Bottom Line
I don’t think I have seen 4G speeds in Europe this summer as a T-Mobile customer, but I have seen faster than the Edge speeds that I used to get. T-Mobile keeps improving its offer (my $50 plan now gets 2 GB of high speed data instead of 1 GB also), and I am very happy with T-Mobile as a traveler.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel℠ and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
Editorial Disclaimer: The editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuers, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuers.
The comments section below is not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all questions are answered.
[…] googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-14'); }); FYI: scott from milevalue just posted a review: https://milevalu.wpengine.com/review-of-f…european-data/ […]
I used it in England, France, Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland the last two weeks. In London i still got EDGE speeds (I assume Tmobile forgot to enable 4G roaming there because I was there July 1st), but in the other countries I definitely got 4G speed, in-fact in Amsterdam i was well over 30 Mbps.
You could do a chat with T-mobile support to add (and credit you) for a 4G 200mb plan to see if it is faster that way (compared to just assuming they have activated 4G roaming in some of the countries you are in)
I’m at gatwick airport now and I’m using 3g most of my trip has been 3g
Scott, Good article. On a recent trip to Italy, Greece, and Turkey I picked up a SIM card for my Verizon iPhone. I could not read any instructions on buying data and since I called no one it was pretty useless. We need a good “How To” to use our Androids or iPhones in Europe. Sprint and Verizon are the big two here in the US, so what do we do with these?
We used it in Cancun a few months back.
It was LTE most of the time.
Used it in London and Spain… 3G & LTE most of time, definitely much faster than it was previously on 2G. T-mo somehow routes the network traffic through servers in the US which is why its not ‘true’ LTE/3G… I noticed this as I would play Pandora.. when I used a local sim, I get a msg saying its not licensed in the country… but when I use the t-Mo sim, it worked fine. Overall, t-mo has def stepped up its game, and I think vzw needs to follow suit to a degree… I have both and will prob switch entirely when vzw gets rid of or charges more for my grandfathered unlimited data.
I’ve been using in Greece and it’s definitely LTE I’m getting here. Even on islands. I’ve AT&T unlimited global data and even that’s on 3G in Greece and haven’t seen LTE. I also have Project Fi that also announced high speed traveling data and it’s also on H, or 3G speeds and haven’t seen LTE.
If you have been publishing articles that are written by others as your work, then it makes me wonder what else under this site name is also the work of someone else or another travel blog entity.
There was another frequent travel blog that was investigated for misrepresentation of their actual intentions after the alleged owner of the blog was found to be a minion of a certain credit organization.
I hope this is not the case here.
I was in London from 7/11 to 7/19 and was with 3 other people who all were using TMobile. It was rare that we ever saw the 4G LTE speeds and in fact, sending texts with pictures was nearly impossible. When I returned I canceled the TMobile plan and when I called, I had 2 reps argue with me and tell me that TMobile does not guarantee any speeds outside the USA as they don’t control the towers. I told them that this was omitted from their marketing materials and regardless, if their plan can’t meet my needs I don’t want it.