Cell Service North Shore of Lake Superior

almcc,
It does.
Thanks again

Hi Jim:

Sorry, I don't have info for Bell or Virgin. You may want to find who your provider twins with here, then you can get a better idea of the coverage. I looked at the Rogers coverage map and they give a VERY different coverage area than the reality up north.

For Rogers the phone service dropped off north of SSM, we stayed at Rabbit Blanket Lake in LS provincial park, no service. No service on Rogers in Neys PP and the Marathon area, service resumed somewhere east of Thunder Bay.

I make the assumption that if you don't have phone service you won't get data either (although I've been wrong in the past!). The sat internet service we use is through Hughes with a dish, so we can get it anywhere (except in the trees in Rabbit Blanket!).

Hope this helps!

Al

almcc

"...coverage in the rest of the areas is iffy at best.."

Are you talking phone coverage, data coverage, or both?
Since you mentioned a satellite I'm thinking you are talking data.

Bell's coverage map (as well as Virgin's since they use Bell)shows phone coverage all along the North Shore of Lake Superior - but I have heard in reality that it's mostly along the highway. Have you any knowledge of Bell / Virgin service?

Thanks for the "in the area" report.

Jim

We are in the area now on Rogers, the service isn't great, lots of gaps. There has been some consolidation of providers, Rogers has taken over Thunder Bay Tel and Dryden's cell provider as well as the provider in Marathon Ontario (but as a Rogers customer I still can't connect in these areas!!!)

If your provider links with Rogers you will get Rogers service around the Sault, Sudbury and Rogers in Thunder Bay, coverage in the rest of the areas is iffy at best.

We carry a satellite internet dish, it comes in handy when we are up here.

For $15.00 I can add "Canada" to my Verizon cell phone family plan.
This should give my wife and I 1000 min of phone usage and unlimited texting. So the phone will not be a problem if all works as promised by Verizon.
Now data service through Verizon is another thing entirely and that is too expensive for me. I will disable data roaming on my smartphone once in Canada.
I'm hoping to find a Virgin Mobile Canada store as soon as we cross the border and sign up for their "Data Stick" plan which provides 1G of data for $30.00. That is, if the cost of a data stick is not too high. I'm taking an older phone with me that has a sim card slot and maybe I can just buy a card teather the phone to my computer as my data stick. Not really sure how it all may work out. Knowing that the best data coverage I will get while on the North shore of Lake Superior will be 1xrtt and very slow I may just forget about data.
I guess I'll survive.

If you intend to use your U.S. cell phone, the roaming fees will be horrendous unless you want to use your cell phone for emergencies only. You'll have to pay roaming fees. There are gaps in the cell service along Highway 17 on the north shore. You'll see that on the maps that were suggested that you look at.

It's 100% dependant on the service provider. Check the various companies websites for coverage maps.

Bear in mind however, as in a lot of rural areas, coverage is focused along the highways so you may not have any signal at the shoreline but have great reception inland on the highway.

Thanks Brian

Jim

It's spotty. Here is Telus' 3G and lower map:

http://mobility.telus.com/en/NS/canada_travel/3G_canada_travel.shtml

The other national carrier is Bell Mobility, but Telus and Bell share the same HSPA+ and LTE network, so the coverage is identical. This is the only real way to have any kind of data speed. The two carriers have separate CDMA networks, but only Bell Mobility will have much if anything up there. If the parks have WIFI (Provincial parks may not) then Skype is an option.

Here is the Bell map, if you click on 1xRTT you get their CDMA map which is actually not bad coverage, but obviously slow data speeds. http://network.bell.ca/en/coverage

Brian