I moved from California to London a year and a half ago, but I've kept my US T-Mobile mobile account live ever since then. It was handy to have a US phone-SIM I could pop in when I was the in the US, but more importantly, for $20 I got an unlimited T-Mobile WiFi account that worked at practically every Starbucks in the world, as well as dozens of airports and other convenient places.
Back in June, I noticed that T-Mobile had started charging an extortionate $0.18/minute to "roam" on the Swisscom WiFi services I often used in Geneva. When I called them to ask about this, they said that they had no choice, as Swisscom was charging them that much to provide service to their customers (incidentally, that is substantially more than it costs to simply buy Swisscom access from Swisscom).
But now I've happened upon this article at WiFi Net News, which explains that T-Mobile is charging $0.18/minute to "roam" on its own WiFi networks in Europe. If a T-Mobile US customer uses a UK T-Mobile hotspot, T-Mobile charges $10.80 per hour for the privilege!
What the hell? I can understand that if Swisscom is charging T-Mobile ten bucks an hour for roaming, T-Mobile isn't going to eat that — they'll pass it on to their customers. But if one T-Mobile division is charging another T-Mobile division $10/hour to provide WiFi for T-Mobile customers, then surely T-Mobile can fix it. By contrast, this is 33 percent more than T-Mobile US customers pay to roam on the Telecom Italia and Portugal Telecom networks — in other words, the Italian government offers T-Mobile US customers a better deal that T-Mobile UK does!
I've finally found the excuse I need to cancel that old T-Mobile account of mine, I guess. Thanks for nothing, T-Mobile.
