Sprint has rolled out a new plan that allows users to roam in 15 countries, called the International Roaming Value Plan.
Through the plan, users will be able to check their email, download pictures and check their Facebook, among other things, without paying extra. The plan applies in Latin America, Europe and Japan.
"The continuous feedback from our customers indicates how important it is to travel without the fear of high roaming charges," said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. "So, we launched free data roaming and Wi-Fi. Latin America, Europe and Japan are only the beginning. We will continuously add new countries to ensure our customers can use their device virtually wherever they travel."
Unfortunately for Sprint, continuous feedback from customers is likely at least partly due to the fact that T-Mobile introduced a very similar plan 18 months ago. Only, Sprint's offering is a little less good.
T-Mobile's offering essentially allows Simple Choice subscribers to freely text and receive data. While it is data at 2G speeds like Sprint, the point is that users don't have to fear being disconnected and unable to make contact with their friends and family. Customers can, if they want, pay for 3G speeds, with $15 buying 100MB of data to be used in one day, $25 for 200MB of data to be used in one week, and $50 for 500MB to be used in two weeks. The price is the same for both Sprint and T-Mobile.
The big difference here is that Sprint's offering is only available in 15 countries, while T-Mobile's is available in a whopping 120 countries.
As is often the case, Sprint is a little behind the times, offering a great feature, but only offering it late and really only offering a dumbed-down version of it. Sprint will, of course, offer more countries as time goes on, however the fact that it has unveiled the plan so late is difficult to come back from.
Customers have been taking notice of T-Mobile's stellar offerings over the last year or so. The self-proclaimed "un-carrier" has been unveiling new feature after new feature, shaking up the wireless industry and certainly has the new customers to prove it. Not only that, but Sprint has been consistently losing customers, and while of late it has been losing customers a little less, the fact remains that it is still in trouble.
Having said that, it's certainly nice for Sprint customers that they can now travel without having to worry about losing contact with their friends and family. Only time will tell if Sprint eventually offers many more countries or if new regions will trickle in slowly, essentially keeping it far behind T-Mobile.
