Best value in roadwarrior mobile: The T-Mobile ONE Plus add-on

To me, one of the best kept secrets in mobile plans is the T-Mobile add-on for their ONE plans. The add-on, conveniently called “plus” adds such an incredible amount of goodies to the already well priced plan that most travelers would be nuts not to consider it.

Of course, for every one fan of T-Mobile, there is someone who will mention their personal experience with bad coverage, or that one time they had slow speeds, but all I can present are my own stellar experiences using the magenta provider.

Adding Plus to your line costs $15, or $10 when you add to each line of a multi-line setup. The various features can be seen in the image above, but I’ll still pluck a couple from it just to help support my claim:

• 20GB of LTE hotspot is absolutely fantastic, especially since it is all offered at full speed for the entire 20GB, and then drops to 3G for the remainder of the cycle. Most phones make connecting to their built in hotspot really simple, and with all the lousy Wi-Fi offered out there, having access to decent 4G for your laptop or tablet can often come in quite handy. Speeds on T-Mobile are ranked as the best in the industry, and I’ve regularly seen hotspot speeds as high as 50Mbps when traveling.
• Next up is the 2x speed increase for international data. The ONE plan already offers free 2G data when abroad which quite frankly isn’t really usable, so bumping it up to 2x is a welcome addition. Even here, some more speed might be welcome, which is why T-Mobile also offers on-demand data passes when traveling. As soon as your phone connects to the international carrier you’ll receive a text message welcoming you abroad, along with information on whether you are connected to a network included in your plan. At this point, you can also click the link in their text message to add one of these passes.
• I’ve kept the best for last – unlimited in-flight Wi-Fi on your smartphone. T-Mobile already offers one hour free to all customers on Gogo equipped flights. With passes being sold for as much as $30 per flight segment, gaining access to a $15 upgrade for unlimited Wi-Fi is a steal. Be aware, this promo is only for smartphone data, which means your laptop isn’t included (unless you make your browser pretend to be a smartphone of course…).

So there you have it – what I consider the best priced mobile plan for travelers.