Dubai Stu

TMobile's plan is contract. Do you qualify? If not, ATT's GoPhone $60 plan covers both countries. See the link earlier on this thread.

BigFlyer

That was my initial thought - that the Canada/Mexico roaming was contract plans only - but apparently not, prepaid has the free roaming:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/s...-prepaid-plans

BlueThroughCrimp

Yes, that's the link I was looking at. Either the $50 or $60 plan with plenty for 2 weeks data usage.

Dubai Stu

Cool. Glad I was wrong! I'm going to Copper Canyon in '16 on a long tour and may pop for an $80 prepaid SIM and swap out my US contract SIM for that one trip.

bocastephen

This looks very interesting...but the problem is my phone is not compatible with the TMobile frequencies in the USA, but will work on Rogers or Fido in Canada - does anyone know which roaming partner TMobile uses in Canada?

Dubai Stu

Rogers, Bell, and Wind. You obviously won't be using Wind. TMobile has refarmed much of its HSPA network in the U.S. To 1900mhz. I am not saying you might have a little more 2g than you'll want, but you'll have a lot of 3G.

Does TMobile prepaid roam
on ATT in rural areas like it contractual counterpart?

bocastephen

My phone is Japanese and uses 800/850 on ATT in the US and the same on Fido/Rogers in Canada and supports 2100, not 1900. Not sure how the phone will behave in Canada on the roaming partners (except Wind), but it won't work in the US on 3G/4G

BigFlyer

It is kind of surprising that they allow it on prepaid - I always assumed that one of the reasons the fee data roaming was not allowed on prepaid was the fear that people would buy a prepaid card before a trip and then toss it afterwards. People are less likely to get a credit check run on them and then just keep the line for a one month or less trip.

If I was a full time Canada resident I would be very tempted to get a new Tmobile prepaid SIM every month (a new one every month so I wouldn't get cut off for excessive roaming), which could be cheaper than a native Canadian plan (although it is a closer call now with the Canadian $ being so low.) I would use Google Voice to have a consistent incoming number every month. Of course one problem with that would be that Canadians would need to call a US number to reach me - although that could be mitigated with a $3 per month and .5 cent per minute Canadian DID from Localphone.

jamar

Ah, another Japanese phone user. From my experience with an unlocked docomo phone, you'll get 850 on Bell and Rogers. I think these plans all need to see some usage in the US first, but as long as your phone isn't a 4G/3G-only model you should be able to run up a bit of talk/text/2G data on T-Mobile first before heading out.

I wouldn't, not with Mobilicity merging into Rogers and them committing to honoring any old Mobilicity plans on their network. I just signed up for a postpaid plan from them because that'll be all my Canadian talk/text/data needs sorted- C$40 for unlimited Canada/US talk/text, 30 minutes North America roaming, and 6GB full-speed data with no obvious restriction on tethering.

JadedTraveler

I used a Simulicious card on a recent trip to Quebec and Montreal.

It worked without issue -- arrived on time, east setup (see Internet settings on a non Chatr device here), and full coverage, except in a few rural areas near the NYS/Quebec land border crossing.

However, one aspect I was not expecting is Chatr, as discussed the brand Simulicious uses, does not do LTE. Not in any area, nor in any shape, manner or form. Simulicious does not clearly state that anywhere, and I assumed LTE was to be included. I'll chalk this up to a lesson learned about pre-paid discount carriers. From what I can tell Fido, the other sub-brand of Rogers does do LTE.

My phone did show GSM signals, as I now understand that is the fastest network a Chatr SIM card (in my phone) will ever get.

One related point, I used the maps from sensorly -- crowd sourced mobile signal strength and upload/download speeds, Rogers 4G, and Rogers 2G & 3G -- and assumed Chatr gets Rogers 4G, but what Chatr gets is Roger's 3G. Maybe some of the above discussions stated that, but the point wasn't clear to me until now.

HotelFlyer

tl;dr if you want call, text data from/to USA, Canada and Mexico T Mobile Simply Choice with $5 add-on may be right for you.

Having read this thread over the weekend in preparation for an upcoming trip to Canada I checked out my mobile carrier's options too. With friends and family in Canada plus quarterly business trips I've been making do with "WhatApp" and voice calls from my land line only.

T Mobile offers prepaid plans that allow you to add-on a $5 per month service for calls, text and data in Mexico and Canada. It's part of their Simply Choice plan. You may have to dig for it (I had to go thru CS to get switched), but with their new packages, I'm actually paying less per month.

Andrew Retz

I travel to Canada from the US frequently. I'm on an old grandfathered Verizon unlimited data plan. Due to this, I can't get in on the great "TravelPass" deal for $2 a day that uses my existing Verizon plan. Thus I'm looking for a decent secondary option while in Canada.

As much data as possible, as fast as possible(4G), and as cheap as possible. What is everyone using these days? I got to Toronto mostly, sometimes Montreal/Ottawa. It seems like Wind is a decent deal for $35CAD(about $25 USD) a month, but it doesn't work in Montreal although that's not as big of a deal. Also I typically go in 2-3 day spurts so an entire month is not necessary.

Are there any other options, including a mifi type solution? I'm on an iphone and mostly text using iMessage(data) and use my phone 99% of the time for data only services. Any help would be appreciated.

ajGoes

Do you use enough data to justify the cost of your unlimited data plan? I discovered I was paying a small fortune to remain grandfathered. When I looked at what I was paying for unlimited data, and discovered the three phones on my plan never used more than 5 GB/month, I dropped grandpa like a hot potato.

Your post reminded me I hadn't checked my Verizon plan lately. Thanks to you, I've just changed it again, cutting my cost for three phones from $126 to $99 before tax. This is the new-ish "Verizon plan" (I guess they got tired of fancy names), which comes with unlimited minutes and texts (including international to 200 countries) and 3 GB of data. Additional data is $15/GB. Not coincidentally, increasing to 6 GB would cost another $15/month.

The other cool thing I discovered today is that the More Everything and just-plain-Verizon plan now include free wifi tethering.

bocastephen

Unfortunately your CDMA phone will be a limiting factor unless it supports GSM roaming and is unlocked. If that is the case, you can apply for the Rogers $5/month tablet plan for data only (don't let them know you're using a phone with it, none of their business). You will pay a base fee of $5 CDN per month when not using it, then a tiered amount based on the amount of data you use when you're in Canada, and you can tether it with LTE for other devices.

No included voice/text, but with Google Voice/Hangouts or another SIP dialer, you can do voice and text. This is what I am doing now and it cut my expenses by over 75% vs my former solution of FIDO prepaid voice/data+WIND for laptop data.

KRSW

For those looking to see if their existing mobile phone will work in Canada:

LTE bands by carrier:
Bell: 2, 4, 7, 17
Rogers: 4, 7, 17
Telus: 4, 40, 42

CDMA is definitely dead in Canada and I believe GSM/Edge are no longer available as I just got a letter from Mercedes that as of Mar 1 2016 the car's built in telematics will no longer work in Canada.

I switched over to T-Mobile (USA) with one of their Simple Choice plans and it works fine in Canada. Saw Bell, Rogers, and Telus show up during my trips. Keep in mind T-Mo plans are month-to-month, no minimum times. I believe you can suspend a T-Mo plan for up to 5 months before they'll consider it to be a new customer.