A Cell Phone Quetion

[Turkeytop]

In Florida, with a hurricane threatening us, at my wife's urging, I went out and got a cell phone, in case we needed it.

Turns out we didn't need it. The storm missed us.

I got the phone from T Mobile. We're back home now. There are still a couple of weeks left on the service plan but of course we're too far away from the network. If I attempt to call there is a message saying the service is unavailable. But I'm still getting incoming calls. How can that be?

[MWmetalhead]

I'll be the first to say T-Mobile has a confusing maze of prepaid plans that are marketed under different brand names. Verizon is now just as bad in that regard following its recent acquisition of MVNO, Total Wireless.

Which T-Mobile plan are you on? Connect by T-Mobile prepaid? (Regular) T-Mobile prepaid? Metro by T-Mobile? One of the much more expensive T-Mobile post paid plans?

Certain mobile phone plans purchased in the United States are not intended to receive service in foreign countries or to place outbound calls to a foreign country from the U.S. In some cases, international roaming can be added for an additional fee.

Did you & your wife inform the salesperson at T-Mobile that you intended to use the phone in both the U.S. and Canada and that your primary place of residence is in Canada?

I can tell you Connect by T-Mobile, which is the plan I use and is by far the cheapest single line prepaid plan offered by the company, does not offer service outside of the U.S. of any kind.

Regular T-Mobile prepaid (which is more expensive than Connect) offers you the ability to add international service for an extra $5 per month and the ability to place outbound international calls when using the phone in the U.S. for an extra $15 per month:

https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

You may be eligible to have your T-Mobile phone unlocked so that you can switch to a different carrier:

https://www.t-mobile.com/responsibility ... ock-policy

I attempted to place a call to a Toronto phone number for a business conference call this past week and learned the hard way that my plan does not support international calling. Fortunately, I work from home and was able to use my Comcast land line as a Plan B.

If your mobile phone is assigned a U.S.-based phone number, you may be able to enroll in Google Voice, but I cannot guarantee that it will work for you:

https://voice.google.com/u/0/signup

Here is a good tutorial with regard to how deprioritization of cell tower traffic works:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/com ... riers_and/

[Turkeytop]

I got the Metro by T Mobile plan, and paid the extra for calling to Canada feature. I don't believe that also includes calling from Canada. How could it? I'm out of range of their network.

I would have thought that someone attempting to call me from the US would just get a message telling them I'm unavailable. But somehow those calls are getting through. The only calls I've been getting are robo-calls or calls from someone dialing a wrong number. But it's a mystery to me how they get through at all.

I have zero interest in reactivating the phone ever. I got it for a one day emergency that didn't materialize.

I'm content with my phone on the kitchen wall

[MWmetalhead]

Found this info on their web site:

https://www.metrobyt-mobile.com/terms-c ... d%20States.

Sometimes, if the carrier or plan you are using does not support international calling, you can still receive incoming calls from other countries. This is the result of roaming agreements between carriers.

From what I can gather, the add-on international calling feature for Metro by T-Mobile is much more useful when using it to place outbound calls from the U.S. to foreign countries than it is when traveling abroad.

[Turkeytop]

All the time I had the phone I only placed one call. When we landed in Detroit last week, I called to London ON to arrange for our shuttle pick up.