Because of COVID-19, I haven’t been down to the United States for a few years now.
Before every trip to the US I would research various ways of getting low cost cell phone coverage down there. I have fond memories of surfing the web in the car on my HTC Touch, a privilege that would have cost me hundreds of dollars per month to have in Canada.
I’ve used prepaid AT&T SIM cards from eBay, SIM cards from the now defunct Roam Mobility and in later years Rogers’ Roam-Like Home. It has been getting easier and easier for Canadians to get decent roaming coverage in the USA. Rogers Roam-Like Home feature was by far the simplest option as it didn’t even require a SIM card swap; the catch though, it is/was pricey.
I am with Telus now and was prepared to just use their Easy Roam feature which gives me access to all my current cellular plan features, including unlimited calling and access to my shared data for only $12/day. This doesn’t sound too bad unless you actually do some math.
We will be in the US for 12 days and both my wife and myself will want to use our cell phones while travelling.
$12/day x 2 lines x 12 days = $288 CAD + HST.
I have a tablet plan as well and I am not sure if the above figure includes roaming for my tablet or not.
With the bar set so high I was pretty sure I could find a not too difficult way to get cheaper cell phone coverage while travelling.
I found several reasonable travel data eSIM offers, however I could not find one that actually included voice or text, just data.
Then I discovered T-Mobile and their wonderfully simple T-Mobile Prepaid app.
Their pricing is decent (at least compared to anything available in Canada). I estimate it will cost us approx. $130 CAD and will included unlimited data. I tested out the T-Mobile Prepaid app and It seems pretty simple to use. I don’t have to swap out my SIM card as T-Mobile uses eSIM. I can sign up in the app and it appears I can use a Canadian credit card to pay.
I am pretty excited to give them a go.