theworld

Hi

My g/f will be in Canada for a month and will be travelling pretty much all around the country.

She has an iphone 3gs (unlocked).

Are prepay sim cards on GSM available in Canada and if so, are they easily available?

Am I right in thinking Rogers is the network to look at (plus Fido, which is tied to Rogers?)

Also, will the sim card work nationwide?

Thanks!!

weekilter

You can get prepaid from Rogers and Fido (now a sub brand of Rogers.) You could also in most major cities use Wind, but Wind uses a different spectrum (1700 Mhz) that the iPhone does not support .

The way things work with local and long distance is not like in the US in that your local calling area is essentially the same as the local calling area for the locals or maybe a little larger. To make calls within the local area you are just charged the airtime rate. To call outside the local area you are charged long distance. Your account will work anywhere in Canada that the service you use has service. Wherever you are you get to pay airtime for the local area and will pay long distance to call out of the area and also you will pay long distance to receive calls if you are not in your native local area. If you should decide to roam in the US be prepared to pay $1.45 per minute to roam

It's not as easy to find prepaid SIMs in Canada as it is in Europe. You can get a Rogers SIM at a Rogers corporate store. Same goes for Fido (and I'm guessing Wind as well.)

PropWasher

Rogers in all but name

http://mobility.petro-canada.ca/default.aspx

uppereastff

I purchased a Fido prepaid for a Canada visit and boy do I regret it. What a disaster!
Signing up was a nightmare, and then it turns out they don't accept non-Canadian credit cards to charge the prepaid Sim. I loaded $50 on it and then found out to get data, you have to take a monthly plan at $17.95 even if you are only visiting for three days.
But the final joke on me was that Fido has no masts outside the big cities. I couldn't use my phone 90% of my time in Nova Scotia. What a total waste of money!

Cozmo456

If yours is a 3G phone, you can use Telus and Bell too. They have prepaid on theirs and their baby brands Koodo and Solo. Plus others like PC, Virgin etc.

Dubai Stu

Canada's voice prepaid market is a disaster unless you are in one of the few areas covered by Wind.

Conversely they've got a pretty dynamic data scene. If you got a good 3G phone, you may wish to consider doing VoIP over 3G I do that a lot in Canada and it works well. Canada has an awful lot of 3G evening were all areas. Unlike voice there is no regional restriction on 3G. Look at something like VoIP cheap's client for either Android or iPhone.

Camarones

When I was in Toronto in 2011 I used a Rogers pre-paid SIM. I chose them because they supported the AWS 3G frequencies I needed for my T-mobile US phone at the time. It worked well enough and cost about $35 to get started (SIM + credit). From that credit I got a short-term data plan and per-use voice minutes or SMS.

It was fine overall but I recall the sales person saying something about it only working in that region. It may have had more to do with the voice services than the data plan, maybe it wouldn't include long-distance calling or something. I just wanted to mention that so you are aware of the possibility.

Dubai Stu

The regional issue is the big problem with Canadian prepaids. You pay roaming when you are 50 miles away from your home area. There used to be a problem with short life spans of Canadian prepaids, but they are fixing that problem.

DH

I bought a Fido SIM card from a Canadian Ebay dealer and got it activated before my trip. Once I got to Canada, I bought the refill card from a Fido dealer. For the data, Fido gives you daily or weekly option when you try to access the web with the smartphone. Since I had the online access to Fido, $25 for 500GB was available which I took. My Fido experience was good using unlocked iPhone 4.

YVR Cockroach

If you stumble cross a 7-11, SIM cards are sold for $10 and refills are available. Uses Rogers network. Unlimited data is said to be available for $10 p.m. (never tried it as I'm too cheap to pay).

DH

I noticed Petro-Canada is selling its SIM card for $5 and uses same network at Rogers.

Braindrain

It's the same company - Speakout. Refills can be done online and any refill over $25 is good for 1 year. I switched from Rogers years ago and I save a ton of $ (basedon my calling patterns). I switched over my wife and my father. The only drawback is that it can't be used outside of Canada.

bocastephen

I'm torn between keeping my Fido prepaid and jumping to Petro Canada. I have an unlocked ATT iPhone and I usually get the $2 daily unlimited incoming plan and a cheap data pack - I can talk all I want for the same $2 daily charge provided the calls are made to me - but if I call out, I need to pay 30c/min.

300 anytime minutes and unlimited data is $32 with PC

6 days of Fido is $12+$1 in taxes/fees I need to pay up + upto $15 in possible data pack purchases....so it becomes almost a wash provided I don't go over 300 minutes (50 min per day budget).

So, the only risk is I go over 300 minutes then my pro-Petro Canada calculation goes out the window.

How is the data speed with PC - since it's on the Rogers network (as is Fido), is it full speed 3G or do they throttle it? If I want to port my Fido PP number to PC, but my Fido account is inactive (no balance) will it still work, or do I need to recharge the Fido account (basically wasting $10) to get my number ported?

Braindrain

There's a Speakout forum where you can ask questions about speed, etc. For the number porting, if the number is active, it can be ported. If your ph # is inactive, not sure what the need is to keep the same number?

bocastephen

I posted on Howardforums - it just seems strange than PC is offering unlimited data for $8 a month while Rogers, which owns the network, is gouging their own customers for the same data.

I did find out one big caveat - if you switch to, or use PC - if you let your account lapse for 45 days or more, your account is closed and the phone number lost.

With Fido, my account can go inactive for months but I still keep my phone number and just reactive by buying a voucher when I get to Canada, logging on my account and setting up my payment and options.

With PC, the only way to preserve the account is buying the $100 refill and asking them to change from/to the monthly plan as I visit Canada so the account doesn't deplete....so that is something I need to think about.