I’m vacationing in Sicily and before I left home I looked at alternatives to using Verizon’s Travel Pass for International data, calls, and SMS. It was recently increased from $10 to $12/day. For my wife and myself, that adds up to over $300 for our 14 day trip, if we both used it every day. (A monthly pass for each of us would have cost $200).
Coincidentally, I have been trying out Mint Mobile, an MVNO that purchases and resells minutes from T-Mobile. Service costs $15 per month for the first 1, 2, or 3 months, payable in advance, and then $15 per month if you renew for a year.
Since I already had their eSIM and app installed, I checked their international options and was surprised to discover that they offer a $20 international pass for ten days that provides 10GB of data, 500 minutes of call time, and 500 SMS messages. Similar options are available for 1 day and 3 days for $5 and $10.
That’s much less expensive than Verizon that offers 5GB MB of daily data that’s not transferrable to the next day. Unlike Verizon, Mint Mobile allows hotspot use, so my wife is also able to use her phone tethered to my hotspot when we are together.
You can buy the Mint International Pass (called Minternational Pass) through the app as needed or in advance and simply activate it when needed. I ended up buying a 10 day pass and a 3 day pass for a total of $30. That’s 10%-15% of what I would have had to pay for Verizon’s daily or monthly Travel Pass for two phones. We found that the data allotment was sufficient for our use.
I’ve not looked at other MVNO providers, and I would expect there are some with equally attractive rates. I had always thought that an MVNO was a lower quality option for those that didn’t have the credit to satisfy the major carriers, but I was wrong. From my experience with Mint Mobile, they provide a very attractive and low cost option to the major carriers, particularly when traveling internationally.
How it works:
1. Download the Mint Mobile app
2. Sign up for one or more months of service covering your travel dates.
3. Purchase the international passes for the number of days you’re traveling.
4. Switch from your normal phone’s SIM to the Mint eSIM when you leave on your trip using the Settings menu.
5. Activate your International pass when you arrive.
A New Verizon Alternative
Verizon recently introduced a premium level plan called Unlimited Ultimate that includes international roaming. It’s a whopping $80 per month, about $40 more expensive than their average plan. But those with a lesser plan can upgrade to this plan before traveling and downgrade upon their return and will be charged on a pro rata basis. That is a lot less expensive than buying daily travel passes, as long as you remember to downgrade your plan when you return.
AT&T
I’m less familiar with ATT, but they also have a $12/day travel pass with a $120 max per month. I’m not aware of an international plan like the one Verizon just started.
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Feedback from a reader: I have Mint on my personal cell phone and Verizon for my work mobile. I gave my wife my phone with a Minternational pass for use while in England and France last month. It worked fine in London at all times, typically connecting to Three mobile. In Grenoble both my work cell and the Mint phone linked to Orange F for service and at first we had wireless internet and Google map services available, including live tram and bus schedule information. However, after the first day or two both phones on the Orange F service would completely lose data and text services despite making no changes in settings and confirming data roaming was selected.
On my work phone I was able to go into settings and take it off Automatic Network Selection and manually select an alternate carrier (Bouygues) to get reliable mobile data coverage. On the Mint phone, it would find the two alternate networks but would only connect to Orange, so there was no way to work around Orange shutting down data service, even though we should have had unlimited data access.
Lesson learned is to make sure my next phone has eSim capability so I can at least access a working local service if the Mint support fails.
NG
How about ATT ?
See additional info added above.
I switched to Mint Mobile from Ting because I anticipate that my next phone will be e-SIM only and Ting doesn’t support e-SIMS. In the meantime, I went on a dizzying cruise through the Baltics stopping in 7 countries (plus overnights in London in each direction) with a physical SIM and the 10-day pass. There were a few dead spots but otherwise it was flawless- gave me a message to activate in each new country and I was up and running. I’d had a couple of multi-country trips before in which getting a local SIM card was impossible or nearly so and the SIM I bought in London worked in other countries only if I topped it off using a UK-issued bank card, which I didn’t have. This was a far more user-friendly experience.
I use Google Fi. It works in 140 countries and the rates are the same as when I am in the US. I just don’t have to think about travel, I just turn off airplane mode and within at most a few minutes I get a `welcome to country-that-I-am-in’ message. We have two phones on the plan and rarely go over $50 per month for the two of us. In a recent trip to Egypt where we were almost totally dependant on celluar data we hit the $110 monthly maximum for our two-phone plan.