If it's a US iPhone 4, I'm pretty sure it'd work on the TELUS network since it's one of the phones TELUS offers. (The quirk with AN*G-BNE's iPhone was that it seemed to be a different version, lacking a band.)

If you're only going for a week, Rogers/Fido might be a more economical solution since they have a weekly data plan whereas it seems TELUS only has a monthly one.

BTW: AN*G-BNE's... good info in your follow-up. ^. Personally, I like to do things myself but my buddy and I have similarly run into various issues when trying to register/config phones in the States as well. Find it's just simpler to just have everything done in a store.

To complete the tale, it turns out I was wrong with the Australian iPhone 4s. On arrival, those who had them tested it out, and they do have the 850 MHz 3G band. So, these worked fine on Rogers 3G.

Anyhow, for my family, we had

HTC Desire, 3G/UMTS: 850/2100, GSM: 850/900/1800/2100, worked fine on Rogers 3G
HTC Wildfire, exactly as above
LG Optimus One, 3G/UMTS: 900/2100, GSM: 850/900/1800/2100, worked on Rogers but using EDGE on GSM, due to the lack of 850 3G band

I was JUST looking for this information. I am going to be a few days, week in canada. It would appear that the Rogers plan for voice/text with a week add-on for data is the cheapest? And it works with iphones? I have a couple original 1G iphones and 3GS all unlocked and JB'd.

Is that the best/cheapest solution just to have communications of some sort?

Here is my experience with the whole thing.

I ended up buying a couple of Fido SIM cards off eBay. The day before I got into Canada I tried to activate them online and the Fido web site was down. It seems to do that a lot (the activation site I mean). Eventually I was able to activate one card and put $10 on it. I used an American credit card which went through with me putting out hotel's address but apparently that is hit or miss. Ideally you need a Canadian card to activate. Once I got the $10 on it and chose the prepaid plan of my choice I was able to make calls. However the main reason I wanted it was for data (e.g. To check maps). The data never really worked until eventually I figured out I had to change the APN settings to ones I found on some forum I ended up on through google. Once I changed the settings I was able to connect to the default fido page and purchase a 250mb data plan for about $8, which they deducted from my card.

Apparently another easier option to get money on a card is to buy one in Canada. I wasn't able to find one easily in Whistler but didn't really look too hard or ask around.

For limited use, mostly voice, the best deal may be with 7-11 Speak Out or Petro Canada Mobility. They use GSM on the Rogers network and unlocked phones with pre-paid as the only option and no out of Canada access. They are operated by Ztar on Dallas.

thanks
 

I've looked at some of those. there were some negative comments over on HOFO about the 7-eleven data, lack of connectivity, etc. Maybe it is better now.

does anyone know if the 7-eleven prepay cards will work with an iphone? It seems canada still considers thing like web browsing WAP browsing for many devices

See http://www.speakoutwireless.ca/ for detailed discussions.

good stuff. the one thing I am not able to find an answer for with the 7-eleven option is, can one buy a stand alone SIM at a store? It would appear one has to buy a 25$ voucher card and then ORDER the sim. That doesn't work for most.

The cheapest phone comes with a sim card and it's unlocked. You can use those phones as spares for travel. You can drop any US sim into it.

The cheapest phone (Nokia 1661) does NOT come unlocked. I received 2 of these phones when they had the free phone with $100 airtime purchase.

You can use use a Rogers sim card in any Speakout phone.

Wow, i'm just looking for a SIM and it appears that SIM only is a limited option.

Did you test other sim cards and find some that don't work? I put a T-Mobile version in my phone, which is not the most basic, and it worked.