International roaming / India - has issues

Anyone found any fix for Tmobile-Vodafone coverage issue in Pune ? With E after the strong network bars, there is no connection or data flowing at all. 

My friend paid $50/month (or 4 weeks) for international roaming and was fine in major metros.  My brother-in-law travels to interior Tamil Nādu and AP.  he got a data device from a local provider and connects to Wi-Fi to that device.

He had no problems once he has latched on to the WIFI.  I do not know the cost of a wifi / data device with different providers.

I received message on arrival that my T-Mobile plan gives data at up to 256 Kbps.. however this is false. I was never able to get Internet during the 2 weeks stay in Pune.  Even adding the 15 GB international data pass was of no use…T-Mobile is providing false and misleading information about the data roaming service in India.

oh im sure they have data roaming over there..however they dont have to much control on forcing them to fix their towers or for them to make adjustments to their roaming...that would be on the tower owners over there to handle.

I have been trying to use my T-mobile service on several of my trips to India over the past 10 years- Come back from each trip frustrated whenever I tries to use. In large cities it works good percentage of times, but once in the country side, and that includes National Highways, it rarely works. Initially, I spent lot of time talking to the customer service of T-mobile and also local partners. Yes, I am talking about the areas where T-mo maps show it's in the covered areas. Now I just turn it on only when I have wifi access. I understand the frequency bands used for the handsets sold in USA may be sometimes different from the ones Indian cell sites use (there are always at least some common bands where the handset should lock on), but I even tried using T-mobile sim on  Indian handsets, but still they don't work. It's same whether you buy a roaming package or use free slow speed data you get with the magenta plans - I tried both. This probably is the problem with the setup with the Indian carriers, but it's for T-mobile to coordinate with them and get it fixed. We cannot take it up with them individually where we are not even their paying customers. I don't think T-mobile cares.

My parents just went to India for the past three weeks,and the went to Gujarat, Ahmedabad, Banglore, and Mysore and surrounding areas. We the magenta plus for business plan. My mother was able to use WhatsApp for texting, audio and video, along with gps waze/Google maps. We had a great experience with the service and it was working in both the city and also rural area. We were able to able over hour long conversation with very little drop in call.

The only recommendation I have have which might make a difference is to make sure you have roaming turned on your phone. Each phone does it differently, but make sure you turn on roaming in all settings in for phone.

I have had this same problem. When I landed in New Delhi airport on July 1, 2022, it kinda worked, though slow, but that is expected. I have spent the last few days in Guwahati, a pretty large city. Apart from the inability to get to the internet, I have another problem: the data service rarely works, including texts. This is a severe problem for me as whenever I try to make a purchase using my US credit cards they send a code in a text to my registered phone number for verification. But since I don't receive these texts (except sometimes with a random delay that can last hours, by which time the purchase is timed out), I cannot use my credit cards. All the while, my phone shows LTE with 50% bars (with an R on top to indicate roaming, and the Settings show that the SIM is now registered to "vi India"). Strangely, occasionally it works great; I have even had a video call once through Whatsapp with a person in the US.

After reading this forum I decided it’s not worth my time to talk to T mobile about connection issues; they are clearly aware of it but decided not to do anything about it. 

I think we should not give up. We are being cheated here by T-Mobile. I think a lot of us with families back in India, we signed up for T-Mobile because of the draw of Simple Global. I know I did. Otherwise, I was a happy AT&T customer for 20 years. My phone bill was lower with AT&T as well. I am paying higher because I thought Simple Global will be simpler on my trips to India. But it is not. As soon as you go out of metropolitan cities, roaming just doesn't work. I was in Agra for two days on my last trip and it didn't work. Imagine, going to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world and Simple Global not working. How can T-Mobile even advertise Simple Global Roaming coverage in India with a straight face? 

Has anyone found out where, which department, which phone number we need to complain to fix this? We cannot let T-Mobile off the hook for this. 

Terp1nator wrote:

Has anyone found out where, which department, which phone number we need to complain to fix this? We cannot let T-Mobile off the hook for this. 

I used to know the names and e-mail addresses of the international roaming managers in Bellevue, but they have moved on to other things. Unfortunately, T-Mobile is (IMHO) really bad about passing customer complaints to the appropriate management. Bellevue seems to almost exist in a bubble.

A quick follow-up:
I found a few apps on the google play store that let you use any DNS server you wish, by creating a minimal vpn connection on the device itself.
These send the DNS requests to your server of choice, while just passing through all remaining traffic.

I settled on Nebulo (because it was free with no ads or purchases)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frostnerd.smokescreen

and now have working internet over mobile data on my phone when it is enabled.