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by r00fus 4074 days ago
Where did you travel to? When we went to France, I got great speeds (almost 3G-ish) roaming on several providers there (IIRC, SFR and Bouygues) in all sorts of locations, including very remote ones.

In the end, we paid $40 (all for calls @ $0.20/min) for 3 weeks of near-normal usage with 2 iPhones.

To me that's very much a game changer - previously I paid double that same amount as an accidentally access charge (forgot to turn off roaming on my AT&T phone). Not to mention I had to spend 30m with the AT&T rep to configure our accounts so we wouldn't get charged $2/min prior to our trip.
2 comments
noobermin 4073 days ago
I have to echo this comment. I recently travelled to Japan and Singapore, and I managed really well on the 3G speeds I got from T-mobile's free roaming. I'll admit I didn't spend my time there streaming youtube videos, but I did use instagram and occasionally google maps, although it was slow for maps sometimes (then again, maps is slow here in the US too, it's most likely my SG SIII not playing well with the latest and greatest maps version), moreover, I tethered from time to time. At the end, I paid a pittance (something like $2) because I had to make one call. For me, T-mobile's free roaming was a godsend.
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discordance 4073 days ago
I usually cache google maps offline when traveling to another country: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en
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Someone1234 4073 days ago
> Where did you travel to?

It was this cruise but in reverse (Aruba last, cayman first):

Ports: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida | Aruba | Cartagena, Colombia | Panama Canal, Panama (Gatun Lake) | Colon, Panama | Limon, Costa Rica | Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands | Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

When I paid for data I got good 3G or 4G speeds. With free data it was incredibly slow, like sub-56K modem slow, even at the same ports as the 4G speeds with paid.

Here's a YouTube video someone else took which accurately represents my experience:

https://youtu.be/PISKCPFu3iU?t=26s

It takes a minute to load Gizmoto's homepage.

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lmz 4073 days ago
If you don't mind your connection being proxied there's always Opera Mini.
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