T-Mobile bulks up overseas calling options with new plan
The $15 plan offers unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling to more than 30 countries.
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If you make a lot of overseas phone calls, T-Mobile might have the plan for you.
T-Mobile Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said in a blog post on Thursday said it would expand its Stateside International Talk & Text plan to add a new $15 option that would include unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling to more than 30 countries and up to 1,000 mobile-to-mobile minutes to Mexico. The plan goes into effect on February 23.
The plan comes on top of an existing Stateside program that costs $10 a month and includes unlimited calls from the US to landlines in more than 70 countries, as well as unlimited text messages to more than 200 countries, and charges no more than 20 cents a minute for a mobile-to-mobile call in more than 100 countries. Customers who choose the new $15 plan will also get the benefits from the original plan.
Sievert tied the announcement to next week's Mobile World Congress, noting that he expected T-Mobile customers to "make the most of their new freedom." T-Mobile executives won't be attending the show, as the company is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter results on Tuesday.
Sievert said that the new plan was designed as a response to customers on the original plan who accidentally called mobile numbers and got charged with unexpected fees.
"That's not good," he said. "That's not Un-carrier."
While Sievert noted that the competitive response to this international plan has been non-existent, Verizon Wireless did introduce free text messages from the US to an international number as part of its "More Everything" plan.
T-Mobile was likely mindful of that. The title of Sievert's blog post was "Updating Global Services for an Ever-More Mobile World."