International roaming / India - has issues

I traveled to India for 4 weeks in September and October 2022, after reading this forum. Given the mixed comments so far, I wondered "will the cellular data with T-Mobile work or not in India, and will there be surprise charges"? I am back and here is my review. Well, it worked almost everywhere during my 4000+ kilometer zig-zag drive journey in India, as I visited various historic sites and infrastructure projects to review in the field. T-Mobile free data service driven Messages, WhatsApp etc worked in Delhi including Delhi airport, and numerous small towns of Chhattisgarh, towns and cities of Madhya Pradesh including Bhopal airport, of Uttar Pradesh, small towns and cities of Odisha including Bhubaneswar airport, and most of West Bengal including Kolkata airport. Only exception were isolated parts of Raipur city and parts of Asansol city (may be one or two tower issues?). No bill surprise afterwards too, now that I have received and paid the monthly bill that covers the period of my travel. Slow speed data is indeed included free by T Mobile in India, and for me, it worked nicely in the states mentioned above. I was traveling with the recently released iPhone 14 Pro. I have the Magenta Unlimited plan. These were my phone options → Settings : Cellular → then Cellular Data : On (Green); Cellular Data Options : Roaming On; Personal Hotspot : Off. T-Mobile Turn On This Line : On (Green); Scrolled down and confirmed that all the desired Data-driven Apps were On (green).

jains99 wrote:

 tried nebulo, but perhaps I am not doing it the right way. can somebody provide clear instructions?? i dont see any LTE/data bars, so pretty sure its not just DNS issue. perhaps ninjit’s scenario was different

city: Bhopal, India.

cellular connectivity VI (vodaphone). good
actual network: VI India 3G
however, no data connection (and tmobile connectivity chart is deep purple, and deep fake!!)

 

ninjit wrote:

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)

 

The same developer has an older app that I found worked a bit more reliably than nebulo
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frostnerd.dnschanger

Try that one

 tried nebulo, but perhaps I am not doing it the right way. can somebody provide clear instructions?? i dont see any LTE/data bars, so pretty sure its not just DNS issue. perhaps ninjit’s scenario was different

city: Bhopal, India.

cellular connectivity VI (vodaphone). good
actual network: VI India 3G
however, no data connection (and tmobile connectivity chart is deep purple, and deep fake!!)

ninjit wrote:

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)

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.

I just landed in India a week ago and have been experiencing the same problems described by others here.

Phone shows LTE/4G full bars, and “Connected” in network status, but there is an exclamation point over the indicator icon, and all apps claim no internet available.

However, while trying different apps, I opened my work VPN (Cisco) and it gave a more detailed error message than just “no internet”, it said “DNS name lookup failed”.

Unfortunately, I did not have a terminal/ping utility on my phone, but using hotspot I was able to connect my laptop and behold, there was internet, but no name resolution
ping/nslookup google.com error
ping 8.8.8.8 worked fine

With that info, I changed the settings on my laptop to use google’s dns server (8.8.8.8) and had internet working at that point, albeit just via hotspot.

I could not see a way to force use of a specific DNS server on my phone (Pixel, android 12) for mobile data, just in manual wifi settings.
The private DNS feature only accepts a hostname, not an IP address, and so that too fails, since it can’t look up the new server to switch to in the first place… a bit of a silly limitation, I think.

Before India, I had been in Japan and Singapore, and had no issues with roaming at all.
So it seems that T-mobile’s own roaming data settings may have a DNS server that is often blocked within India for some reason.

Hopefully this helps some of you too, and maybe T-mobile can help fix this soon.

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.

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. 

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. 

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 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.