Blog Post: A thought experiment about roaming data charges

Hi, MJ here,

I just had a raging thought experiment after reading about the roaming data charges of my Irish cellular network carrier.

I first thought the price plan of T-Mobile USA, T-Mobile Connect Unlimited Plus is quite pricey at $60.00 plus tax.

But when I read the fine print of my Irish carriers roaming charges I thought, “Hey T-Mobile, take my money!”

Let me quote the fine print of my Irish carrier:
“Once you have consumed your full data allowance within your 1GB data roaming add-on, you may purchase a further 1GB data add-on for €29.99. Otherwise, all additional data usage will be charged at standard out of bundle rate of €4.99 per MB / €5,110 per GB”

Even if I am conscious abou my usage and buy the second GB in time, I would still be cheaper with T-Mobile USA considering the conversion rate.

Just think about it:
Five thousand one hundred and ten Euro per Gigabyte?!?

It would even be cheaper to take my pictures,
to pay someone splitting up the files into 1 MB portions,
to buy 1024 3½-inch DS DD floppy discs for data storage,
to put each of those 1024 floppy discs into an envelope and
to post each envelope with The U.S. Postal Service to Ireland.

I would then still have enough money to pay someone in Ireland
to reassemble the files and
to pay the tickets for my next vacation.

I intentionally did not mention my Irish carriers name, because this kind of robbery called ”standard out of bundle rate” is still common practice in this industry, but I think this must change.

Disclaimer: This is also not meant to be promotion for T-Mobile USA, they just happen to be the first mobile carrier I think of as a German, who was already alive when the root of this company was still called Deutsche Bundespost. 😉😜🤪🤣

Leave a Reply