cellular usage in the US by Canadians

[WannaFTit]

Have any of you Canadian RV'ers used a company called Roam Mobility yet for your cell and data needs while travelling in the US? It looks like a good plan to use for texting and calling back to canada while travelling but I am just wondering if anyone has actually used it yet.

We are thinking about using it for the first time when we travel april 14th so if anyone has any info about it beforehand, we would love to hear from you.

cheers

John and Judy
Happy first time Winne owners

[Dogpatch]

I've only ever just activated the roam on my phone from my cell provider.
What kind of cost are they attaching to their offer?

[Dogpatch]

Actually looked at their site and some reviews. It's cheaper than using roam from a local provider!

[Dave Killey]

I planned on giving this a try myself. But would probably not purchase till about Mid May. So maybe if you purchase first, you could let us know how it works out for you. I have read threads that say the tech department for roam is hard to contact. I will be doing my research over next few weeks and will post anything I can find out.

[WannaFTit]

I have had a few issues crop up while getting all of my ducks (services) in a row and I can say without reservation that their people have solved all my issues to date within 12 hrs of my raising the issue. To date I have no complaints about their service and I will be happy to report back here as to the results of our trip down to the smithsonian institute next weekend.

Cheers

John and Judy

[Fred1609]

We have generally had a package added from Telus for the month we are away. For internet we are using Millenicom this year. Best price I could find. We were considering a phone from walmart for the month we are in Oregon and California. I'll check the thread to see how John and Judy make out. I've heard an advertisment on a local radio about roam mobility but didn't pay it much attention. Its a new service that all I know about it.

[Dave Killey]

I guess when I first read about this device I had mis-read. I thought the device was for use in Canada and the USA. I see it is only for use in the USA but you can call back to Canada with the phone plan. Looks like a great product if its a fit for your needs. I will look forward to you comments after your trip.
Safe travels

[95f5334j]

We've been using our tracfone for about 5 years and have never had any service issues. When I wanted to change my phone number, they sent a new SIM card at no charge.

For $100 we get 1000 minutes and 1 year of service. We can phone back to Canada, there's no charge for long distance, there's no contract and no roaming. Unused minutes roll over. If we need extra air time, $20 gets 120 minutes, $40 gets 240 minutes etc.

For internet, Virgin Mi-Fi let's me hook up 5 devices. Monthly cost is $40, the data plan is unlimited and there's no contract. The router was $99. There are no better deals for Rv'ers IMO.

[GREGORYJ]

I agree with 95f5334j on the Tracfone. It was a $20 LG phone from Walmart , no roaming
fee, same rate to call back to Canada & good coverage as it uses the Verizon system.
We pick up air time cards at any US Walmart (for us $20 for 90 days) , sometimes picking up an extra air time card to add air time on line from home so the phone says active and the phone numbers stays the same. I think the $100 for a year of service is a good idea and I'll do that next time. Note:Tracfones can only operate in the US.

[moisheh]

Not all Tracfones use the Verizon system. We have been using a Tracfone for travel in the USA for 4 years . Works great. In order to get on the Verizon network you must buy the correct phone. I think it has to be CDMA. You also have to activate it for a specific zip code. Whether one is wanting Internet or cell service NO ONE has the nation wide coverage of Verizon. Unfortunately you cannot get unlimited data. Millenicom is still the best deal for 3G service.

[WannaFTit]

We are in the states now and so far everything is working great. We have koodo for our Canadian cell provider and so we forwarded our cell to our office (which has free ld) and then have the office call our roam mobility US number. No ld or roaming cost to recieve any calls to our Canadian cell, no need to give out the US number to everyone before we left. With roam mobility, we have unlimited text and calling anywhere in the US and back to Canada, no contract and we can add to the account in Canadian funds via our credit card even if we are still in the states. We are using the roam mobility hotspot while we drive down the road and the campgrounds wifi when we camp so Internet is no problem. We simply turn off data on our iPhones. So far so good, if anything changes, we will update here.

Cheers

John and Judy

[WannaFTit]

We are back from our trip and the Roam Mobility phone and hotspot worked like a charm. The way we did it, was to forward our koodo cell phone to our office (make sure the cell phone and the phone your forwarding to are both local to each other, THIS was an important point) and then forwarded our office to the Roam Mobility american cell phone (they provide a sim with an american number attached to it on the T-Mobile network). We turned off the cellular data of our iphones and once we were in the states, we wifi'ed onto the Roam Mobility hotspot we took down with us. No roaming or data charges. Our total phone bill was no different than if we had stayed in canada. There were no roaming charges to our phone for any of the incoming calls we recieved and any out going calls were made by the US phone (which had unlimited North America wide coverage).

We were very happy with the cost of this phone but and there are only 2 drawbacks that we encountered (both we considered minor inconveniences)

1. Roam Mobility doesnt support blackberry at the moment
2. The network was a bit slow for any kind of data other than email and web browsing (video streaming was poor at best but we didnt need that so we didnt worry about it)

We will be taking it down with us any time we go to the US from now on.

John and Judy