You’ve heard the story before… a friend goes on a week-long vacation and uses his phone “once or twice”. A month later, he opens his mobile phone bill to learn that he has been charged north of $1,000 in international roaming charges. He then has to spend several weeks fighting with his telephone company to (maybe) get the charges refunded. What a pain!

If you are going to be traveling internationally frequently and want to use your mobile phone, it’s hard to beat T-Mobile’s current offering. T-Mobile’s Simple Choice plan features:

• Unlimited data usage in 100+ countries.
• Unlimited texting in 100+ countries.
• 20 cents/minute calls to mobile phones and landlines while roaming internationally

All of T-Mobile’s postpaid mobile phone plans come with no contract and offer unlimited voice minutes, texting and web; the only difference between them is the amount of 4G data you can use. Plans start at $50/month for 500MB of 4G data and go up to $70/month for unlimited 4G data domestically. Currently, T-Mobile is even running a promotion where they will pay your current carrier’s early termination fee.

Readers, have you used your mobile phone internationally? Did you get slammed with outrageous fees? Is there a better international data plan that readers should know about?