International Blackberry Roaming, Data Plan or Pay for Use

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When I got fed up with ATT’s high wireless costs I decided to look into cheaper alternatives that would provide me the same levels of satisfaction.

High on my list of satisfaction drivers besides cost are things like phone features, network stability, international capabilities and cutting edge technology. I am an avid blackberry fan and have been for several years. With my frequent international travel I have always opted for an international blackberry plan in addition to my regular voice and domestic data plan. The international blackberry data plan costs about $65 per month with ATT.

I switched over to T Mobile when my ATT contract expired. Their prices and plans were appealing particularly their unlimited talk, text and web family plans at a fraction of my costs with ATT. T Mobile also offers and international blackberry email plan for $19 – Key fact being that this is an email only plan. After taking an international trip about a month ago I clearly saw why T Mobile specified this as an international email only plan. T Mobile bills regular data separate from emails. My first bill was a bit of a shocker with the extra charges for international data roaming. I did a quick check of popular phone forums and saw that several other T Mobile customers who apparently previously enjoyed unlimited data and email for the $19 plan were now being billed separately for data and email when travelling internationally. Apparently T Mobile finally figured out their data billing with international carriers and can now separate email from data.

I was naturally infuriated and it made me rethink my decision to join T Mobile. The best way to figure out if my switch was a good idea was to put some numbers to the situation. In computing the numbers I assumed the knowledge that T Mobile will bill international roaming email and data separately and that T Mobile international data would have to be used conservatively on my next trip.

The ATT international data plan costs $65 a month and requires one to sign a yearlong contract. There are cancellation fees however I am not sure what the amount is. Over the cost of a year this plan would cost $780 per blackberry. There are two devices on my account, both travelling internationally thus requiring the plan thus a total cost of $1,560 per year. Considering the fact that this plan also covers domestic blackberry usage and assuming use of 20MB a month, one would probably use the ATT $25 domestic blackberry plan. The cost of the international portion alone would be ($65 - $25) x 2 x 12 = $960 for two phones in a year.

T Mobile charges $19 for the international email plan plus they charge a max of $15 per MB of international data used. Assuming that I travel with this information in mind and limit my data usage as well as connect to WIFI as often as possible with my blackberry, I could limit the total non-email data used on both phones over a 1-week period to about 10 MB. This would cost $150 in extra data charges. I know this data usage amount is unrealistic especially considering how data hungry modern mobile devices are, however it is possible to reduce data used by using WIFI whenever possible since the Blackberry model I have does both voice and data over WIFI and I typically have access to WIFI networks.

The $19 that T Mobile charges for the international blackberry plan does not require one to sign a contract and can be cancelled at any time. I take on average 2 international trips a year.

Assuming disciplined usage resulting in a maximum of $100 in data used per trip plus the $19 international email fee per phone per trip, two trips will cost an extra (($100 x 2 x 2) + ($19 x 2 x 2)) = $476 a year for the international data portion on both phones with T Mobile. This is less than the ATT cost, however one does not have the luxury of unlimited usage. It also assumes very disciplined usage of the phones during the period offsetting data use by using WIFI whenever possible. One also has to police their data usage, which in itself takes away from the joy of enjoying the full functionality of the phone. If you take more international trips, stay longer when you travel, or have no access to WIFI to offset your data use, the T Mobile pay for use plan may not be as cost effective.

In summary sometimes a pay for use plan is a better alternative than a locked contract, however always determine the point where based on usage you are better off locking into a more expensive data plan. I also think that it is only fair that T Mobile should offer an unlimited data plan, especially since they have now figured out how to bill email and data usage separately.