Telephone service in Canada

[Spaceman Spiff]

I am going to be spending about 4 months this summer wandering around Canada.  I would like to have a phone that I can use to call the US on a regular basis.  Currently, everything I am finding is complicated and expensive.  Any ideas?

 

[B and C]

When I went to Alaska, my Verizon phone worked in Canada without extra charge (Mexico too). I just went up the Alaska highway though and of course didn't have a lot of coverage. Around larger towns and cities it worked well though. Some Canadians here may have a better short term options.

 

[Almost There]

Take your american phone with you but don't be surprised if it won't work on the Canadian networks. Be prepared to buy a cheap phone up there if your US phone won't work with a new sim card in it. (I ended up with both an american and a canadian phone for this reason.)

Virgin Mobile is the best service provider I've found in Canada both for competitive pricing and for customer service - they actually  use Cdn based customer care and have a sense of humor.

V/M runs off of Bell Canada towers, the largest cell phone provider in Canada. You can pick up either a prepaid or pay as you go plan from them. V/M in Canada is now wholly owned by Bell Canada but is maintained as a separate entity. Do not confuse it with V/M in the US.

Be prepared for sticker shock though, Cdn cell prices are very high as compared to US prices even when accounting for the almost 30% currency exchange.

It should be noted that the amount of land that is not covered at all by any cell phone coverage is vast. Where I work in the summer at a National Historic Site is a full 45 miles from the closest cell tower....town of several thousand people and a place where we have 60G of visitors  year! The campground I stay in relies on satellite internet for service as does the historic site.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Thank you for your replies.

My problem is that most of my calls will be to the US and those are expensive: Rogers quoted me 50¢ a minute for call to the US on their pre-paid plan  :exclamation:

My US carrier is Verizon and they said that if more than 50% of my calls are to the US they would 'reassess' my call plan.  I have a life-long friend who went blind last summer and I try to talk to him every day, otherwise I would not care and go with inReach texting to my family and my Verizon phone re-configured for any inside Canada calls.

I'm just starting to explore VOIP calling.  Anyone with experience with Google Voice or similar over the internet telephony?

 

[Firtree]

If you have gmail you can get a google voice number right now and start playing. I’ve used GV many years initially for texting as my then phone plan charged like $.25 per text.
Now use it as main number to give out to companies, DR, friends, everything. There is a way to then connect your mobile, home, several mobiles to the one GV number. Have ATT and Verizon (both using Red Pocket) and home OOMA linked to the one GV number. Someone calls my GV number it rings all 3 phones. Or goes to GV voicemail. Have the app on phones and tablet so voicemail or texts come to the app on all devices. Nice thing is your phone dies, buy a new one, no need to try to port old phones number. Link new phone to GV number and you are set.

GV will use data for calls not your X or unlimited minutes, so data is more important. Someone can tell you how much it might use for a phone call.

Someone can also say how well GV as a phone works over WiFi like at starbucks, library parking lot. I don’t have that experience.

 

[B and C]

I use google voice also. It is my home number now and am using a obihai device for connectivity here in the house. All my house phones are tied directly to it. I ported our old house number to a cell carrier and then to google voice. We have had the same "home" number since 1979. This number has stayed with us every time because it was my wife's cell phone number for years. Anyway.

I have a couple of old cell phones and a tablet that I put hangouts dialer app on and connected to google voice. Calls come in and I can make calls using the google voice number this way as long as I am connected to wifi. I have never tried it on my working cell phone, so not sure how that would work. I have two hotspots (AT&T and Verizon) that I use for all my data stuff. As long as I have a couple of bars of cell signal and not on a congested tower, it works OK, otherwise stuttering and dropped syllables.