macleadv
Explorer
Joined 14 years ago
User Profile
User Widgets
All Activity
Re: Best Phone/data plan for snowbirds
We will be travelling from the east coast of Canada to Florida and staying the month of april 2015. In 2013 we purchased a Tracfone Phone in Maine for our visit to Cape cod that year. I have a few questions about these cellular phones. 1. Would it be better to purchase prepaid airtime and re-activiate our present Tracfone. 2. I plan to use it only while traveling to and from Florida, and with minimual useage while in Florida; so would I use Maine(Border crossing) or Florida(Condo) as my location referenced for re-activation? 3. Would I purchase a new tracphone at the nearest US Walmart (Calais ME)? 4. Would there be roaming fees from Maine to Florida and in Florida? 5. Can I call Canadad from Florida with normal long distanced charges? 6. Is there any other cellphones with plans better or equivant to the tracfone? thanks678Views0likes0CommentsRe: Best Phone/data plan for snowbirds
rwbradley wrote: One thing to keep in mind as a snowbird coming from Canada, Roam coverage is not entirely dependent on the cell towers. Generally I agree with your comment, I have been in many places on the East coast from NY to FL and have seen generally poor coverage in some rural areas, but this I think also has to do with coverage differences in the two countries. In Canada, if you are within 100 miles of the border (where 90% of the population is) we have virtual blanket coverage even in the middle of nowhere and virtually no coverage in the far north. In the US however, their population is spread out more and for this reason the cell towers seem to be concentrated more around big cities and interstates. This means there are a lot of dark areas when you get off the beaten path (where many RV'rs want to be). However I did notice one major factor that is not related to their coverage map, particularly related to data. That is that many phones (iPhone being the worst offender) do not support the correct bands for 3G, 4G, LTE on Roam/Tmoble, so you are always stuck on 2G. Tmobile realized this a few years ago and started upgrading their towers to a more iPhone friendly band, but have only done so in a few dozen of the biggest cities. Bottom line, if you are using Roam on an iPhone or a cheap $0 phone this is far more likely than if you have a Pentaband or Quadband phone.678Views0likes0Comments
Groups
