Mobile expands its worldwide coverage to 20 more countries

Today it announces that its Simple Global scheme, which tries to make the world a smaller place through your smartphone, is expanding to 20 more countries, including all of Europe and all of South America. And, to avoid those charges, the carriers make customers jump through hoops to tack on global roaming plans that jack up their monthly bill.

With T-Mobile’s latest expansion to more countries in its Simple Global programme, American customers who travel will no longer have to worry about extra roaming charges when browsing the web, texting or calling. “The carriers have made billions overcharging consumers who just want to stay connected overseas, and we’ve changed all that!”

T-Mobile boosts this offer with Mobile Without Borders, which allows customers to enjoy full talk, text and 4G LTE data in Mexico and Canada, free of charge.

Other new additions include Haiti plus nine European countries: Monaco, Albania, Belarus, Bosnia, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia; five European destinations: Guernsey, Alderney, Jersey, Sark, and Isle of Man; and four other countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The move means that Simple Choice plans now cover all of North America.

Since launching Simple Global around 2 years ago, the carrier has seen its customers use 140 times more data than they did before worldwide roaming was included in their plans.

A list of supported countries is available on T-Mobile’s website, though the list doesn’t seem to include the 20 new regions just yet.

Verizon for instance has an global Travel Preferred Pricing which requires subscribers to pay $25 for 100MB when taking trips to popular foreign destinations, and a staggering $2.05 for 1 MB of travel data in other countries. As part of the expanded service, Sprint customers also receive up to 1GB of 3G data for free while traveling in Canada and Mexico. According to RCR Wireless, previous year US businesses paid a mind blowing $7.3 billion to USA carriers for their employees’ wireless data roaming charges. Additional data can be purchased at $30 per GB and will only be charged based on actual usage.