joebedford wrote:
I have a Telus mobile phone that can call USA. Virgin Mobile can call USA. I think they both run about 40 cents / min for calls to USA. There are others.
Walmart.ca and BestBuy.ca have lots of phones.
Cheap they're not.
You don't actually have to have a Canadian phone (the physical phone itself) as long as you have a Verizon 4G/LTE phone and a Canadian SIM.
Verizon 4G phones are not locked to the Verizon network. I currently have my Galaxy S4 Mini equipped with a prepaid Bell SIM. It is 100% functional for voice, text and data. My in-Canada calls are only 20 cents a minute because I subscribe to a texting package for $5/mo and calls to the US are 50 cents/min.
We spent the entire summer in Canada and it's really great having a local number. People are much more willing to call you back, if necessary, when they aren't making an international call. Furthermore, this same phone was awful in roaming mode; it would repeatedly lose the network. It runs perfectly fine with the Canadian SIM.
If I chose to keep the phone "alive" over the winter I think it will cost me ~$20/mo. That's in Canadian $$ which at the moment means that it really only costs me ~$15.
