T-Mobile Cuts LTE Roaming In Canada And Mexico To 5GB

T-Mobile is taking back one of its perks for travelers: large amounts of LTE data when roaming in Canada and Mexico. The feature was and still is available to certain T-Mobile subscribers, but that will be changing on November 12. Once that date arrives, T-Mobile will cap the amount of high-speed mobile data its customers can use while in either of those countries.

T-Mobile has been luring in customers via a series of big promotions and major perks, and the growing number of subscribers is evidence that this is working. Still, it appears T-Mobile has some issues to work out, this time around being trouble with how much data its customers are using when roaming abroad.

The carrier explained that it is making this change "in order to prevent usage beyond the intent of the product" — that is, it intended customers to have access to the high-speed data they needed while in Canada and Mexico, but apparently didn't want them using too much of it...too much in this case being defined as 5GB.

Starting next month, customers will have a 5GB LTE data roaming cap, which will affect less than 1-percent of its customers who travel to either country, according to the carrier. What happens if you reach that 5GB limit? T-Mobile says it will throttle the customer to 128Kbps with the exception of T-Mobile ONE Plus customers, who will receive 256Kbps speeds.

The change applies to T-Mobile ONE Plus, Simple Choice, and legacy customers. There's some fine print about how the data distribution works below:

If you are on a legacy plan with a high-speed data maximum (i.e. 4GB, 6GB, 10GB), your data allowance is shared across US, Mexico, and Canada, but you only have up to 5GB high-speed data in Mexico and Canada combined.

For example, if you have 4GB high-speed data total and you use 2GB in the US, you have another 2 GB high-speed data to use in Mexico and Canada.

If you have 10GB high speed data total and use 2 GB the US before heading over the border, then you still only have up to 5GB high-speed data in Mexico and Canada combined. After 5GB, you will still have unlimited data at Simple Global speeds (up to 128kbps or 256kbps if you have ONE Plus). You can use your remaining 3GB high speed data when you return to the US.

SOURCE: T-Mobile Support