Forum Discussion
Overseas Travel: How can I avoid incoming call costs but still use free text/data roaming while abroad?
We're planning to travel to Europe later this year and would like to take advantage of T-Mobile's free international text/data roaming. However, I saw that incoming calls are charged at one minut...
Great question. The easiest way to do this is to enable unconditional call forwarding. This will tell the network to immediately forward the call to a selected number without trying to pin you first which is where the charge comes from.
To enable unconditional call forwarding, you will need to follow these steps https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-4041#secondheading
Dial **21*18056377249# from your phone to enable CFU and ##21# to turn it off when you are back in the states and want to resume being able to get calls.
The 18056377249 number is the same number that your calls are forwarded to when you do not answer the phone so that the people calling you can leave a VM. Since we are enabling unconditional call forwarding, the call will be automatically routed there instead of ringing your phone first.
Another detail; the **21 and ##21# codes are called GSM Service Codes (or Hash Codes). Your phone may have a specific forward menu that will accomplish the forwarding commands without having to enter a yard-long Service Code. In the example above the ##21# code actually says "deactivate and forget". Rather than using ##21#, you could use #21#, which says "deactivate but remember". Then when you want to reactivate forwarding, you'd enter *21#, which says "reactivate". All of the assumes T-Mobile hasn't monkeyed with the "Forward All" commands. They changed the conditional forward system so that if you try to deactivate conditional forwarding it will reset itself to voicemail (And a pox on their house for doing it.) BTW, there should never be any charge for using these codes.
P.S. It's a good idea to practice using these features before you travel.
