Talk:United States/@comment-25567354-20141219064653

I don't work for Tmobile, just a happy customer.

I live in US and use the Tmobile $30 plan for 5 GB and 100 voice minutes as my primary plan. Tmobile has made vast improvements to their coverage and network in the last few years. Register a Google Voice number (use a VPN if registering outside the US) and point it to your Tmobile number. Android and Iphone Google Hangouts will send and receive calls on your Voice number. If someone calls the GV number, it rings both Hangouts and Tmobile native number. Choose which to answer. Latency in major cities is excellent for voip calls. Inbound Hangout calls are free. Outbound to US and CA numbers are free. Low outbound rates to other countries.

Answering on the Tmobile native number consumes allowance minutes. Since the plan only has 100 minutes, I use these as backup if I'm in a high latency area. After the allowance is depleted, calls are USD 0.1/minute, deducted from the sim balance. So far, I rarely touch the allowance minutes and send/receive calls in Hangouts exclusively.

This setup also works overseas. I travel often and buy local sims. GV will only route to a US or CA number, but people calling my GV number will still ring Hangouts. Call quality will depend on the local datanet. Outbound calls to local numbers are billed at GV rates. I confirmed this works in Hong Kong and Japan. Will soon test it in Poland, Sweden, UK.