No network on International roaming in India

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 apps 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).

The Nexus 5 is an incredibly old device.  If it was purchased in North America, it will have slightly different bands than if it was purchased overseas.  My guess is that the device just isn't compatible.

The same problem is with my Phone X

Are you a prepaid or postpaid customer?  What plan are you on?

I am on Tmobile one plus

Have you tried manually selecting the network of the roaming partner or seeing if rhat shows up in a manual scan for networks?  Do you have roamong emabled 9n your sevice?

Yes, whenever i select any of the available networks, it says "Unable to connect to the network, please try again later". Roaming is enabled in the network and it was working fine in other cities. Its just not working in my current location

Except for J&K State, Jharkhand probably has the worst roaming coverage of any place in India. I'm attaching a section of T-Mobile's roaming map covering the area in question. One of the problems with Indian roaming is that the carriers in each state are semi-independent.

Thanks drnewcomb2..so i really don't have an option here to make the t-mobile number work?

India roaming seems to be problematic, at best. You can check in whenever you have WiFi access but if roaming does not work, I can't think of anything else. If I were there and had two phones I might get a local prepay for one and set it up as a hotspot to connect my T-Mobile.