T-Mobile announced Thursday that it will extend free calling across all of North America -- allowing customers on certain plans to place calls between the United States, Canada and Mexico at no charge.

The option is a free add-on to the company's "Simple Choice" plan, without roaming fees by piggybacking on local networks.  Calling, texting and data use will be the same in Canada and Mexico as it is in the United States, although it is only for customers who live in the United States. Communication to Canada and Mexico from the United States will also be included in the plan. The company promised that users will have access to the fastest networks possible.

Simple Choice customers are automatically eligible for the deal and can opt-in by phone, in stores or online; existing T-Mobile customers on different plans are eligible if they switch plans. The feature goes into effect on Wednesday.

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Company chief executive John Legere introduced the new feature on a conference call with analysts and media that was also live-streamed over Periscope, Twitter's live video service. He also released a video blog post on the news:

T-Mobile made clear that it thinks this is a good market for it to court. The company said in a release that 35 percent of all international calls and 55 percent of international travel goes to Canada and Mexico -- as does and estimated 70 percent of travel for small and mid-sized businesses.

Customers on T-Mobile itself are particularly heavy callers to Mexico, said Terry Hayes, T-Mobile's vice president for the Northeast. Approximately 57 percent of international calls are placed to Mexico; roughly 2 percent are to Canada.

Previously, both countries were covered in the company's Simple Global plan, which offers free texting and data in 120 countries around the globe and calls at a rate of 20 cents per minute. Other carriers currently offer Canada and Mexico calling packages, which generally cost between $5 and $10 per month, depending on the package.

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On the call, Legere didn't go into great detail about how the company is providing these calls, other than to say that "we struck a deal with the number one and number two" carriers in Mexico and Canada, although he did later mention a few carriers by name: Bell Canada and Rogers Communications in Canada as well as Telefonica Mexico.

He also boasted that T-Mobile added 2.1 million customers, marking the ninth quarter that the carrier has added more than 1 million subscribers. The last reported subscriber numbers showed T-Mobile within 300,000 customers of pulling even with Sprint. With these additions, the company may have pulled even or possibly even surpassed Sprint -- depending on what the Overland Park, Kan.-based company reports its latest earnings on July 29.

[T-Mobile just added millions of new subscribers. Can Sprint keep up?]

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Legere and Sprint chief executive Marcelo Claure made a splash last week by engaging in a Twitter spat in which Claure called foul on T-Mobile's claims of serving customers' needs -- the fight highlighted just how closely Sprint and T-Mobile will be in the coming months.

In his characteristically colorful way, Legere taunted Sprint on the Thursday's call as he announced the latest subscriber numbers.

"Let the fun begin," he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Simple Choice customers would automatically gain access to the new calling feature. This version has been corrected. 

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