Roaming and data

[roxysmum123]

Our last trip, my husband bought a T-Mobile SIM card at the Buffalo Airport (It was in one of those BestBuy vending machines I think) and it was great. You had to get a US number (which was also great, as we could finally use that at dining check ins and what not) and essentially had all the data we'd need plus texting and incoming/outgoing calls. I believe it was around $50. Way better than feeling like we were going to vomit when we opened up the next cellphone bill after the trip like usual - just swapped it out for his normal SIM card when on the plane to come home and everything switched back to normal. Just an option to think about.

 

[Cera1234]

Depending on the length of your trip, definitely look at the Roam Mobility SIM cards. I bought mine at London Drugs but their website lists all the places that stock them. You set it up all online before you go and get your US phone number in advance. I think it’s 4.95 CAN per day for some minutes, some texts and 512mb of data per day. We have used it many times without issue. Your account / number stays valid as long as you use it once a year (if you’re not going on a trip you could just buy 1 day of the cheapest service, I think $3 to keep it active, otherwise you would get a different phone number)

 

[pangyal]

I have a data-only SIM from Always On Wireless that I put in an older iPhone SE (which we use as a travel phone). It doesn’t come with talk and text, just data, but I use iMessage or another chat client to get around the text issue, and another app that uses wifi or data to make and receive phone calls (it gives you a US number, so people can text it too).

The thing I like about this configuration the most is that you can buy the data by the GB and stretch it out over fifteen days. One GB is $7.99USD, and with the Disney wifi being now pretty good at the resorts and some of the parks, we can easily work with that amount.

 

[star72232]

In case anyone is looking at Europe, I've found a UK SIM that works all over Europe, 12GB data, 3000 minutes of talk (within the country you are in only), 3000 texts, for $36. It seems to have decent reviews (they are either good or terrible apparently, but that seems to be true for any of the Europe SIMs I've seen).

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B01FI1JW72/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?smid=A8MWQUHJ16Z3J&psc=1

 

[DavidL]

We've been a Roam Mobility user for a few years now. We were just in Florida March 8 thru 16 this year. I noticed that there were a fair number of places where signal didn't appear to be available in the city of Orlando. Roam Mobility partners with T-Mobile, so we would have been using the T-Mobile towers. Along our route from Port Huron Michigan to Orlando, the service for the most part was good, but this past trip we noted a lot more dead zones while in Orlando. We were using a Blackberry Q10 phone. I don't know if the issue was with the phone, or with the service. We are making another trip in August, but this time we are going to be using an unlocked Samsung S6 phone to see if it works any better. I'm going to have to get a new Roam Mobility chip as my current one is too large to fit into the Samsung phone.

 

[FigmentSpark]

We've been a Roam Mobility user for a few years now. We were just in Florida March 8 thru 16 this year. I noticed that there were a fair number of places where signal didn't appear to be available in the city of Orlando. Roam Mobility partners with T-Mobile, so we would have been using the T-Mobile towers. Along our route from Port Huron Michigan to Orlando, the service for the most part was good, but this past trip we noted a lot more dead zones while in Orlando. We were using a Blackberry Q10 phone. I don't know if the issue was with the phone, or with the service. We are making another trip in August, but this time we are going to be using an unlocked Samsung S6 phone to see if it works any better. I'm going to have to get a new Roam Mobility chip as my current one is too large to fit into the Samsung phone.

Now that you mention it, there were a few times I thought it had dropped, including in AK. I thought it was just my phone, since it came back, but maybe not?

 

[bankr63]

We've been a Roam Mobility user for a few years now. We were just in Florida March 8 thru 16 this year. I noticed that there were a fair number of places where signal didn't appear to be available in the city of Orlando. Roam Mobility partners with T-Mobile, so we would have been using the T-Mobile towers. Along our route from Port Huron Michigan to Orlando, the service for the most part was good, but this past trip we noted a lot more dead zones while in Orlando. We were using a Blackberry Q10 phone. I don't know if the issue was with the phone, or with the service. We are making another trip in August, but this time we are going to be using an unlocked Samsung S6 phone to see if it works any better. I'm going to have to get a new Roam Mobility chip as my current one is too large to fit into the Samsung phone.

Most people think that cell phone is cell phone, but in fact there are hundreds of wavelengths carved up between all of the providers. Manufacturers create many versions of a single phone model that support different frequencies for different carriers. The phones have gotten more versatile over time, but there is still a chance that your phone is not a good match for the frequencies that the US carrier uses. Samsung made a dozen or more different variants of my old S5 phone, but there are only maybe six variants of my S9 each supporting more frequencies, meaning I have a better chance of having a match with T-Mobile or ATT (Rogers RLH roams on both) with my newer phone. So yes, a change of phone might give you better coverage if it is a newer phone.

You can actually do a little research to see how good a match your phone is. Look for your specific model number on the internet; there are a few sites that will give you this information. For instance if I search Samsung SM-G965W I can find a list of the 41(!) frequencies supported by my phone. I can then search for T-Mobile frequencies to see which frequencies they use (there are 6 across the 4 common bands). Hopefully I get a good match between my handset and the carrier. I actually have a full match, but my old phone did not, so I would get areas of no coverage even though T-Mobile serviced the area.