US Cellphone In Canada?

jyl · jyl's Garage

I'll be on Vancouver Island for a week's camping in July.

Unfortunately, work goes on, so - anyone know of the most affordable way to get cellphone service there?

I have an iPhone 3G on AT&T (US), AT&T offers international voice roaming on Rogers Wireless in Canada but the cost is $0.79/minute if I'm reading the AT&T website correctly. If I add a $4.99/mo "Canada" feature, this drops to $0.59/min. Wow. As for data, international roaming costs appx $20/MB, which is nuts. If I buy a $24.99/mo "Canada" feature, that provides only 20MB, or about a day's use.

I also have a Verizon wireless broadband account. Looks like the cost to roam data in Canada would be $2.05/MB. Downloading a day's email is still $40-50 but I could use webmail instead.

Any other alternatives? I guess an unlocked iPhone could use a prepaid SIM card from Rogers or another Canadian carrier, but mine is stock/locked. I see that the Rogers prepaid rates are $0.33/min.

Christien · Christien's Garage

Can't help you coming this way, but I can tell you that when I was in Florida for a week in Feb. I used my Telus phone with no additional plan - somewhat sparingly with phone calls, but fairly liberally with emails, texts and blackberry PIN messages. My bill was about $35 higher than normal - I was surprised it was so little. Next time I probably won't be so concerned about it and will use it more.

Dave L · 06-24-2009, 07:24 AM

for prepaid you would need to buy a sim card which is usually around $35. You would need an unlocked phone and data would be $.05 /Kbyte. If its just a week I would use the phone, I wouldnt do any marathon calls or send 100 emails per day though either. Can you turn data off and just retrieve email when connected to wifi?

jyl · jyl's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave L

for prepaid you would need to buy a sim card which is usually around $35. You would need an unlocked phone and data would be $.05 /Kbyte. If its just a week I would use the phone, I wouldnt do any marathon calls or send 100 emails per day though either. Can you turn data off and just retrieve email when connected to wifi?

Yes, I guess I'll simply shut off the iPhone's international roaming, push/fetch, 3G and everything I can think of, short of 2G voice service, except when in a WiFi hotspot. Which might be pretty scarce on the west coast of Vancouver Island, I think.