3/22/2016 2 Comments Dear SPRINT and T-MOBILE users,Apparently your phone will have unlimited data and text while you're in Japan! You might not even need a Japanese SIM card or wifi device if you have one of these networks. I only know that T-mobile offers this because my friend who studied abroad in Japan last year was able to use her phone the whole time and she said it worked great! As for Sprint users (like me) I went to Sprint before I left the country and told the guy that I would be studying abroad. He did something on his computer and then said that my phone was ready for Japan and that I would have unlimited data and text. I asked him if my phone would be okay for at least five months like this and then the guys said "just use it until it stops working", which worried me a lot. So I bought a pocket wifi just to be safe. When I got off the plane and went through customs, I took my phone out to see if I could connect to the airport's wifi (I wanted to double check the hotel address because I was shipping my luggage there). When I pulled out my phone, at first it said "no service" in the top left corner where it usually says "Sprint". Then after a couple minutes it said "SoftBank 3G". Yaayyy. Even though it's not 4G LTE, at least my phone is connected and I was able to look up my hotel, post to Snapchat, and contact people on LINE. I received the texts pictured below as soon as my phone connected to SoftBank's network. And I clicked the link about international roaming to find out more. Data is free but the speed is just slower. It's fine for me, and a great backup for my pocket wifi in case of emergencies. I was using my phone's data on the Shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo and the service was spotty. But I anticipated this because we were moving so fast and there isn't coverage in every corner of Japan. When I got to my hotel, the service was fine but when I used my phone this morning, it said "No Service" again for a couple of minutes. I think that this option isn't 100% reliable but it's still nice to have. I was able to make calls on LINE and I could hear everything crystal clear. I used it for Instagram, YouTube and Facebook and it worked great. Unfortunately, when I used it for Google Maps to help guide me to my hotel, it took a really long time to load. I found the hotel without its help lol. Dear AT&T Users:
So I used to have AT&T before I downgraded to Sprint but when it comes to international data use, Sprint has a better deal. My mom is still with AT&T, which is why I have the following information. When she turned on her phone after we arrived, she received similar text messages except hers said that talk is $2.50/min, text is $0.50/text, sending picture or video is $1.30, and data is $2.05/MB. It then offered a "passsport" for $30 in order to get unlimited text, talk reduced to $1.00/min and 120MB of data with $0.25/MB for overage costs.
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