International roaming / India - has issues

Towards the end of my trip, for couple of days,  I noticed that the phone was able to get  data  (but  in  2G  speed.  I saw a  2G  icon at top of  my  android phone  for  last  2 days,  during a 40 day trip to India).   So,  this is still not working,  but  at least we know  they are trying to  do something about the issue  (though  unsuccessfully so far).  

Has anyone else noticed  data connection  issues  in the small cities  of  India ?  I used to  get 3G  speeds  (even  in very small cities of  the southern states of  India)  when  i visited  couple of years ago.  Now  even in a  significant  city  of  india,  i  got  only  2 G  speed - that too after  bugging  Tmobile  about it  for  many days, wasting  hours  of  time  with  customer service.

I have the same exact problem. Works flawlessly in Bangalore, and no data or lowest 2G occasionally. Tmobile wasted 4 hours of my time to troubleshoot their problem. I'm glad i came across this. My company phone Verizon works flawlessly. Time to ditch tmobile....

I was in India until yesterday - it worked fine everywhere except Pune.   Few times i got it to work in Pune but it will go to just Edge  and never goes to 4G and drops.  The sad part is - i have been roaming for over 8+ years and in India TMO used to have several roaming partners now it only connects to Vodafone India now. 

T-Mobile is unable to guarantee roaming partners' performance. Also, your device needs to be compatible with whatever network bands are being used by the foreign carriers. It's always a good idea to check before you travel: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/international-roaming-checklist

Hi I am also facing same problem now when in India. For last 1.5 weeks not able to get 4G Data service while in roaming using TMobile service from USA. I have the HIGH speed services activated for roaming in India for 1 month (paid for that), as I will be in India for 30+ days, need high speed data while I am in my Home town (near Kharagpur, West Bengal).

Looks like TMobile has roaming agreement only with Vodafone, Even though there are other 4G n/w coverage (JIO/Airtel) and Vodafone-4G at my location now, but I am not able to connect to any of the 4G n/w. It just gets service over Vodafone - 3G n/w. 

Looks like TMobile is not doing fair job for their customer, although they said/promised to provide High speed data services (like 15 GB high speed data while in roaming for 1 month) while in Roaming in India, but they failed to provide 4G data service in rural areas of India. This become helpless for us, TMobile should take corrective action ASAP now. Its really frustration for us.

Please suggest if any tips.

Terp1nator wrote:

I am facing the same issue in Bhopal, India. My phone shows full bars but intermittent data connection. This is a complete farce. This was one of the main reasons and I switched to T-Mobile from AT&T and selected Magenta Max. This is not fair to the customer. I am okay with having 2G data speeds as long as it is consistent and I don't lose data.  But this is a joke what I am experiencing. T-Mobile can not make the claims of unlimited 2G data on international roaming if the service is not reliable at all. 

keep in mind that the issue might not be on the TMO side of things...you ARE roaming on a completely different countries network..just like ours they’re not issue free.

plus you should plug your location into here and see what the results are.. might explain what you have going on or in this case NOT going on while there

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/roaming?icid=WMM_TM_U_18INTLTRVL_1EHW93IKD94W1YF9E18213

I upgraded my T-Mobile plan to Magenta Max hoping to not have the connectivity issues I had on my earlier trips to India (Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Delhi). 

I just returned after spending 11 days in Hyderabad. I literally had no connectivity for 95% of my time though I was staying in the heart of the High tech City. As soon as I left Westin Hotel in the High tech City, I would see zero bars on my phone. Sometimes, I will see 3 or 4 bars but no connectivity. Outside the high tech city, I always had 0 bars on my phone. Basically I couldn't use my phone in Hyderabad without a wi-fi connection. I felt like I was living in the stone age with T-Mobile. Not sure, why I am paying T-Mobile for the Magenta Max plan for connectivity in India - I had connectivity in Delhi most times but none in Hyderabad.

I must say that T-Mobile continues to majorly disappoint its subscriber for connectivity in India. I had terrible experience on my prior trips and I thought it was due to not buying their international pass. On my previous trip, I bought the pass and had the same issue.

T-Mobile talks big about high quality and customer care but it seems that they are aware of this problem (this thread and many such threads) and have decided to do nothing about it. I would probably be switching to ATT or Verizon after my contract (new phone payments) are done.  I travel to India a lot and seamless connectivity across India is critical for me.

I am glad that I didn’t waste hours with t-mobile support based on the experience of the folks on this thread. 

Highly disappointed T-mobile.

Day 2 of 2w trip and I am experiencing the same issue as reported above for Pune. when in Mimbai, I was able to connect and use data as normal, but in Pune, I see all bars but no data. When trying to connect on other TMO roaming partner manually - Airtel or JIO, get the error that cannot register. 2 years ago, this was working fine here but now the issue is very bad. Have asked TMO to issue a service request towards Vi India, hopefully they can fix the issue. 

Someone in the technical team at TMO should be reviewing these and trying to identify how to fix for international roamers as it is very difficult to manage without data connectivity

The tech team are so disinterested in actually solving the issue. They literally claim it is a signal problem with the local tower. I have another phone with an Indian plan that is getting great signal with Vi as well as data. They made me change phones and try as well. No dice.

I spent 3 hrs daily for 3 consecutive days with the techs on the phone trying to resolve the matter. Tried all sorts of things but no luck. They kept on saying everything looks OK on our side, so issues with roaming partner Vi. Even got a high speed data pass added to check, no luck! 

the other question is - if there are multiple roaming partners in India & Pune, why can we not manually select other partners? Ever since I got attached to Vi, it wouldnt connect to another partner even when I forced it to. Power off, keep network selection in Manual should allow other TMO roaming partners (Airtel, JIO) to register, but no, it would only attach to Vi. Looks like roaming relationship needs to be evaluated and this issue to be brought out by TMO to their partners.