I had Verizon prior to traveling because it had the best service in my hometown, Phoenix, AZ. I switched to T-Mobile just prior to leaving and was very happy with that decision. As Director of Sales for Pagely I did about 5 sales calls per day so I needed to have flawless phone service. T-Mobile was a great option and worked in all 18 countries I traveled with the exception of Morocco. It’s worth noting they now have a 70% domestic policy that requires the majority of your roaming be domestic-only. I have not actually seen this enforced however and I still use T-Mobile to this day despite having been abroad for 1.5yrs.
I also opted-in for the optional local SIM program with Remote Year and would put a local SIM in an unlocked crappy burner iPhone everywhere we went. This did a couple things:
- allowed me to have redundant ability to tether for data
- ability to have a local number
We were using Uberconference for conference calls at the time and they have local dial-in number options for most countries which meant I had a fully redundant method based on the PSTN (public switched telephone network – not VoiP) everywhere we went. This was maybe overkill as I only needed it a handful of times but it was great in terms of having that confidence that I could always get on a call regardless of the local internet or T-Mobile situation.