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After July 15, T-Mobile users traveling to Mexico or Canada will use 4G LTE data straight from their existing plan instead of paying additional roaming fees.
The company recently announced an expansion of its Simple Choice plan. The new plan could be of special interest to small business owners who travel to either country regularly.
Named ‘Mobile Without Borders,’ the move delivers calling to both landline and mobile phones — and most notably, 4G data straight from your plan — across three countries. T-Mobile claims its Simple Choice mobile plan is the first and only of its kind to span an entire continent.
The move could eliminate a major pain point for U.S. wireless customers who do business in Mexico or Canada by keeping their data costs the same when in these countries as it is at home, the company says.
During a press and analyst call simulcast via Periscope for the general public, T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert explained:
“Over 70 percent of international trips taken by small and mid-sized business travelers were to Mexico and Canada [in 2014].”
During the same year, a release issued by the company claimed carriers collected nearly $10 billion in global roaming charges at over 90 percent margins.
The new “Mobile Without Borders” expansion on the existing Simple Choice data plan is an obvious swipe at rivals AT&T and Verizon.
T-Mobile claims both carriers’ rates for data jump by about 120-times when users leave the U.S.
For example, T-Mobile says business owners who travel to Mexico or Canada could pay anywhere from $30 to $245 per line, per month.
The company claims that last year, U.S. wireless customers’ long-distance calls to Mexico and Canada totaled approximately 25 billion minutes.
Assuming even half those minutes were mobile-to-mobile, T-Mobile says the total pay-per-use cost could be as much as $7.5 billion. And, even if every customer paid for additional international long-distance (ILD) packages, the cost could still total up to $130 million, the company insists.
Still, the claims of long distance companies must be taken with a grain of salt.
One example was in 2014 when carriers were beginning to move to unlimited voice and text and charging for data transfer instead.
At the time, T-Mobile introduced a plan starting at $50 with 1 GB of high-speed data transfer on its 4G LTE network. The company claimed it was offering more data for less when compared with its competitors.
Meanwhile, plans from AT&T started at $65 per month with 2 GB of data.
The idea of paying from the same data plan even when traveling to Canada or Mexico and avoiding added roaming fees could certainly be appealing.
But small business owners or employees who travel regularly to these countries should do some additional homework and watch for similar offers from other carriers to find the best deal available.
North American Flags Photo via Shutterstock
[“source-smallbiztrends”]