Wednesday, May 2, 2012

$15/MB

Pretty soon I will be traveling for Korea for two weeks. I'm pretty stoked about this!

What I was also pretty stoked about was using the Google Translate Android app for the Korean language. It allows two people who speak different languages to alternatively talk, then it uses voice recognition & translation to allow them to communicate. It's pretty cool.

What is less cool is my cell phone provider. I am generally very favorable towards T-Mobile. Their customer service has been excellent and I have been a happy subscriber for almost ten years. But I want to use my cell phone in Korea on a data network so I can take advantage of Google Translate and other fine apps. But guess what?

International data roaming is $15/MB. Fifteen dollars per megabyte!!! 


That is insane. A quick browse of my phone's "Data usage" app reveals that I use anywhere from 80MB to 1.1GB in a two week period. In other words $1200-$16,500 at these rates. Other providers have plans that you can upgrade to if you know you are going to be using lots of international data roaming, but not T-Mobile. (My friend Jeff told me he pays $20 a month extra for unlimited international data roaming!) This is also insane because South Korea is one of the most mobile-friendly countries on Earth. Please T-Mobile, get with the program here.