Cell phone charges while in Canada

Whether you are from Canada heading south or from the U.S. heading north the issues seem to be the same - cellphone/smartphone/data charges in the host country seem to be exorbitant.

The things we've done to pretty much eliminate any crazy charges are:

- call your own service provider to make sure you understand the rules.
- use wifi campgrounds for your data needs.
- let everyone you would normally be in contact with know that e-mail is the best way to get hold of you - and work to stay at parks that offer wifi.
- consider purchasing the services of an internet-based phone company for phone calls - we have Magic Jack and it works fine if you are tapped into a quality wifi signal - there are a number of other services.
- tell the folks who might want to contact you every day to cool their jets - you're on vacation!!
- if your concern is emergency communications while on the road (there are a LOT of "dead" spots in rural Canada) then consider renting a satellite phone(on our own 2 month trip to Alaska a couple of years ago we had rented a sat phone for just this purpose - cost was not at all outrageous and the peace of mind it gave was worth every penny.)


Jay

We just returned from Nova Scotia. We have the Verizon share everything plan with 700 minutes and 1 gigabyte of data. We changed our plan to include Canada which resulted in 1,000 minutes and ??? megabytes of data --- I don't remember the amount. When we no longer needed the service I called Verizon and discontinued that plan. Things worked great. We stayed in a campground near Halifax that had WIFI so no problems with the limited data allowance.

Beware though, make sure that your Verizon plan is still be offered. Otherwise, I understand you might have to convert to a more costly plan.

Sorry I don't know anything about AT&T but you may encounter the same thing there.

By the way, we enjoyed Halifax, especially the harbor, Peggy's Cove and the Bay of Fundy.

I didn't have to do anything drastic with my Verizon Droid RAZR to avoid charges while in Canada a week ago. When I crossed the border, I got a few text messages from Verizon, explaining the charges I could expect. I was then prompted by the phone to allow or deny International Usage for this trip. I selected "deny" and that was that. The phone switched over to a "no service" type indicator, but I still used it to play downloaded MP3s and use offline GPS.

When I crossed back a few days later at Grand Forks, my 4G indicator lit up and I received bunches of saved up notifications.

With the Verizon Share Everything plan, you can add Canada/Mexico calling for $15 month, which gives you 1000 minutes calling from or to Canada. But that is calling only (plus texts, but no pictures or attachments to them).

Major cities and towns in Canada do have cell phone access, but much of the alcan does not, and there is no access along the Cassier or Stewar/Hdyer.

Verizon does have a data plan, as someone said, something like $25 for 100 meg (better than $2 a meg without it). But we met someone who had gotten it in Dawson Creek and had already found using it was not very good. They called Verizon who agreed it would not work well there and had let them cancel it.

Almost all the private campgrounds we stayed at advertized wifi access, but at best you could do email and simple surfing. It was often slower than dial-up at home.

Many had blocked sites like skype, you-tube, itunes; others asked you not to use it as their internet was satellite.

We often found even connecting hard at times; the campgrounds said the problem was someone attempting to do a large download. Wifi did work later, and I suspect they weren't successful with the download.

We were just thankful anywhere in Canada we found wifi!

We did turn off our cell phone data and location sharing well before the border, and took the batteries out of the mifi.

http://www.verizonwireless.com/wcms/global/international-long-distance-and-messaging.html?country=canada

Above is a link which tells you the options for CA.
I have had a VZ phone since 2001 and live Half and Half US and CA.
Never have any problems.

If you are in CA over a month this may be an option.
Although putting some money on Skype and use it as a calling card may be much cheaper ....
:)

Artum Snowbird wrote:
If you are near the ocean, you should have a marine VHF perhaps. In an emergency, they are quite good and they also have the weather channels on them. We use ours almost everywhere we go to listen to the weather channels.

I'd be careful about transmitting on a VHF marine radio when on land. Technically you are required to be within 50 feet of the high tide line when on shore to do so. And we have an Industry Canada inspector here on Vancouver Island who is a bit of a hard-nose and loves nothing more than to fine you for even having a radio with "non-approved" frequencies in it, even if you only listen to them! One thing you could do, IF possible, is to remove the microphone and hide it. That will make the radio receive only (caveat: on most newer VHF radios that are waterproof the mic is permanently attached).

Now, that being said, I have worked loggers in the bush who've had truck problems, or wanted someone to know they were ok. While that was really a no-no, I had no problem with it, since the loggers had probably already tried their own channels with no response, were out of range of the repeaters, or the repeaters were off the air. And the situations were a bit unusual anyway.

Cheers!
Mike

Mobile data up here is not priced anywhere near what it is down in the US, not affordable IMO. If that's your main concern, then be prepared to reach into your wallet.

We are in Canada for two months with an AT&T iphone, Verizon iphone and a Verizon ipad.
As mentioned, Verizon will no longer add Canada for $20 a month unless you have the share everything plan, AT&T has a North America plan, $20 more and we get 1000 minutes a month. All that is for voice.
the biggest issue is DATA. NEITHER company's data plan includes Canada, so your data plan is useless. For $30 you can buy 120 megabites, not gigabytes, of data. Make SURE you shut off your data ROAMING before you could possibly pick up Canadian towers. If you shut off all data, you will not be able to recieve text messages in Canada. If you shut off roaming but keep the data on, you will get texts but they will cost you. All this could change by next year anyway, but thats where it stands now. I made multiple calls to Verizon and AT&T to make sure we didn't get one of those $2000 bills.

We turned off our phones in Canada. Also turned off our mifi and aircard. Verizon had no deals for us. They no longer do the "Canada add-on" for $20 a month. They activated our phones for international calling, but all calls were at 89 cents per minute. So if we had an emergency, I would use it. Otherwise all phones were off. We did go to a 7-11 and bought a phone card to use at pay phones. Many campgrounds in the larger towns had pay phones, but they were kind of hard to find. But that is what I used to call if I had to. We actually had some semblence of wifi most of the places we stopped. Just enough to check in with family.

Dale

Before crossing the border go to your phone settings and turn off "data usage" this will keep your phone from constantly checking for updates, new apps etc. It has no effect on your calling, messaging etc, simply means that you only get charged for what you actually use.
To me a cell phone is a tool not a toy, so I leave "data usage" off all the time. I pay $30.00 per month for nationwide anytime calling, unlimited data/text messaging and the usual voice mail etc.