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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.

Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 6.23.47 PMI’ve had a chance to use the high speed data in Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia over the last few weeks.

Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 6.27.47 PMIn 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.
Screen Shot 2016-07-15 at 6.27.35 PM

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.

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