This is hard-won knowledge. I had to figure out this process by myself with trial, error, calls to technical support and repeated visits to T-Mobile stores. If there’s a similar guide anywhere online, I couldn’t find it. So here you go:
I live in the US. I have a T-Mobile MyTouch 4G, made by HTC. This phone works abroad as-is, but with crazy data roaming charges: $15 per megabyte. So here’s what I did to get cheap UK service on my US phone. I recommend completing all three steps in a single visit to a T-Mobile store. Just stay there until your phone works – you will need to be physically present in front of T-Mobile staff for Step 3.
1. Pay As You Go SIM card
First, go to a T-Mobile store and buy a SIM chip with at least £10 credit on it. The SIM card is technically free: what you’re buying is credit to use on pay-as-you-go phone, text, and data. I selected the International Plan (2p a minute to the US!) To activate the International Plan, text INT to 441.
T-Mobile Pay As You Go Tariffs for UK service
You can get data service with a T-Mobile Pay As You Go Internet Booster. Limited internet costs £2.50 for 5 days (text WEB to 4410, or £5 for 30 days (text WEB to 4410) Read up on T-Mobile’s UK Internet Fair Use policy. Short version: there’s a monthly limit on streaming video and audio.
2. Manually add a new APN
OK, so now your phone can access make calls, send texts, and access the internet. Or can it? No, it cannot, because you need to tell it what servers to connect to in the UK. You need to manually create an APN: “Access Point Name”. The T-Mobile website and the store staff may try to send the new APN settings automatically to your phone. That didn’t work for me, but entering the settings manually did.
Depending on what phone you have, the settings will be different. For my MyTouch 4G, the generic HTC phone APN settings worked.
To create a new APN, click Settings, Wireless & networks, Mobile networks, Access Point Names, then click the Settings button to pop up a menu with “New APN”. Click “New APN” and enter these settings, leaving the other fields unset. The settings are case-sensitive.
Name: T-mobile
APN: general.t-mobile.uk
Username: t-mobile
Password: tm
MMS Protocol: WAP 2.0
MCC: 234
MNC: 30
Authentication type: PAP
APN type: default
When you’re done entering the APN settings, before leaving that screen, click “Settings” again, and “Save” on the popup menu. Then, on the screen that lists the APNs, click to select the APN you’ve just created.
You can also find your phone on this page: T-Mobile phone support: find your phone, click “View all help”, “Manuals”, “Connecting to the Internet”, and “Setting up the phone for Internet surfing”, then follow the instructions.
Now you should be able to connect to the internet. If not, check that you’ve entered the correct APN settings with correct capitalization and that the new APN is active, then try restarting your phone.
3. Remove content lock
Now your phone can access web pages! Or can it? No, not all of them, because your UK SIM card assumes that you are a child trying to view dirty pictures. Flickr, YouTube, and other sites of questionable morality are locked and inaccessible. To remove the content lock, you can visit the T-Mobile website with a UK credit card (which you probably don’t have), or you can show T-Mobile store staff your passport or your obviously adult face and get them to remove the content lock from your phone.
And that should be it. After I had discovered these tasks and completed them my epic quest for connectivity was complete, and my phone worked fine for the rest of my trip. I hope this post will save someone else some time and frustration.
You can get your phone credit topped up with cash anywhere you see a “Top Up” sign: 
News agents, corner stores, Radio Shack, etc.
Happy travels!
i have a htc hd7 from united states and its t mobile will it work in uk t mobile
Hi abid. It will work as-is, but the roaming charges will be very expensive. I recommend buying a SIM chip in the UK and following the steps I have here for setting up an APN and getting the content lock removed. You can just use the phone without any changes, but it will cost you $2/minute for calls and $15 per megabyte (a megabyte is a couple emails and maybe 1 web page).
I’m so glad I ran across this post – and will definitely take advantage of your hard-won research for my upcoming trip to the UK in several weeks, as I have the exact same phone and have been fretting about being able to use it. Thanks so much for sharing!
You’re welcome, Jess! Good luck with your phone on your trip. I’d love to hear how it works out – I hope everything goes smoothly.
Update: UK SIM card worked perfectly – definitely a good purchase, and was a fantastic way to keep in touch with friends & family in the US, and the many new friends made in the UK without a bazillion dollars in roaming fees! The customer service rep at the TMobile shop was less than helpful, however, and I didn’t push hard enough to get the content lock completely removed. It made looking up a pub in Cardiff impossible (!!?!?), but other apps worked just fine – was able to get around the web lock through Facebook and Yelp. Thanks again, Clare!!
You’re welcome! Glad to be helpful.
I am so happy that I have found your page. I spent the past month in England looking at schools for graduate school and the only time I used my phone was when I was connected to wifi. I am taking a summer class in London so this will make my time there much easier to get in touch with my friends that live in the UK. Thank you!
You’re very welcome. Have a great time in London this summer; hope it’s not too crazy with the Olympics!
How about if I already have a UK contract and buy a handset in the US, will my sim work in it? I know they work on different frequencies but modern cells generally have “quadband” access so it should work right off the bat, right….?
Matt, good question. There’s no obvious technological reason it wouldn’t work; it should be like putting a US sim chip into a US phone. Depending on the handset, you’d probably have some bureaucratic hassle to turn the handset on & connect it to the SIM.
But you’d have no advantage in using the US handset – all your data roaming charges would be tied to the SIM chip. I think it would be cheaper to buy a US phone + SIM and get pay-as-you-go, so your charges would all use the local US rate.
Sorry I should have clarified. I wasn’t to buy the new (not out yet) Asus padfone from the USA when I go in August but I want to be able to use my UK Sim card when I get home. That’d work, right?
I don’t know. The technology should work, but then there might be some weird contract thing (like the i-phone being tied to AT&T in the US) that would cause you trouble. None of the problems I had with my phone were the phone itself, it was all because I didn’t have the right kind of credit card number to activate whatever bureaucratic thing needed to be turned on. I’d check the phone docs and check the contract with the service provider, maybe send their customer service an email. Good luck!
I think you’re right. I was planning on buying am unlocked, Sim free one anyway so it wouldn’t be locked to any network. That WOULD cause issues. I already have a contract in the UK and will simply plop my sim into the new handset. Thanks!