How do I properly travel with a Canadian cell phone in the USA?
June 27, 2023 8:24 PM   Subscribe

I know this is a dumb question, but... I'm leaving for a vacation in the United States in a week how do I make sure my phone actually works when I'm there? I visited NYC a few years ago and I had *awful* coverage with my phone, it was a disaster. How do I remedy this?

I'm with Telus and, yeah, when I visited NYC a few years ago and, at first, I just used Easy Roam. And it was fucking horrible!! I barely had coverage! I could barely get anything to work. I even wasted a few hours on the phone with multiple customer service representatives from Telus while there and it just... never worked properly. The phone only worked when I was connected to wi-fi where I was staying.

I ended up getting a new sim card (and some sort of plan, I have no idea what I bought in retrospect) from T-Mobile (because it was the closest shop) and... it worked well with the new Sim Card and that plan.

I haven't been out of the country since 2019, so I'm not sure what the best plan of attack is when I arrive next week! What type of plan/sim card is the best? I'm astounded by the amount of options that exist in the USA and their cheapness compared to the scant few options that exist in Canada.

I guess the only thing I hate about having to buy a new sim card/getting a temporary plan is that my number won't work, which stresses me out a bit, because it's difficult to contact friends/family while I'm out of the country. Did I do it wrong last time? Is there a way I can get some sort of plan that will work and use my current number? I dunno, I don't know much about all of this.

This is a dumb question, I know. I just want to figure out what will be the easiest for me to do when I'm on my vacation.
posted by VirginiaPlain to Technology (11 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've used Easy Roam in the past and more recently just paid for a Telus all North America plan as it was more cost effective in my case. Not sure it matters in any way besides billing though. I usually go to the west coast but was recently was on the east coast for business and regardless of the location both my personal phone (old, 4G) and work phone (new, 5G) had no issues. Can you clarify whether it was data or voice or both? And do you have settings turned to only use WiFi calling, or maybe didn't turn on mobile data? Also how old is your phone, does it currently work with 5G? Telus customer service is pretty useless so not sure if they asked you these in troubleshooting.

Not a dumb question and you should get to have a great vacation, hoping someone in the comments can help with those clarifications!
posted by mireille at 8:42 PM on June 27, 2023


Response by poster: I'm not sure what the issue was, precisely. I travelled with an iPhone 7 last time, I suspect my sim card might have been older too. I think it was the data that didn't work, but I usually had data turned on, and there was no issue in Canada before leaving! I could barely use mapping apps, check my email, etc. I visited Europe on a vacation the year before NYC and Easy Roam was pretty decent there.

My current phone is an iPhone 14 Pro Max and it's pretty much brand new. Maybe I should get a new sim card from Telus before I go this time? It was just super annoying and I don't want to repeat it.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 8:54 PM on June 27, 2023


Your phone can store multiple eSIMs, with any two of them active at a time.

So you could get a prepaid eSIM from a US provider, which will allow you to keep your Telus SIM active (regardless of whether that's a physical SIM or an eSIM) and also have a US number that's active. You can choose which one to use for data, which one to use for calls, etc. Here's how to set it up.

Here's one option from T-Mobile that's geared toward tourists in the US, but you'll find similar offers from lots of other providers.
posted by theory at 9:33 PM on June 27, 2023 [6 favorites]


Canada still runs an older network protocol that is being/has been phased out in the US (3G, I think?). If your phone was older, that was likely the issue. Upgrade to an at least 4G phone before travel this time.
posted by eviemath at 5:15 AM on June 28, 2023


My current phone is an iPhone 14 Pro Max and it's pretty much brand new. Maybe I should get a new sim card from Telus before I go this time? It was just super annoying and I don't want to repeat it.
I'm with Telus and I travelled to Atlanta in December using EasyRoam and had no issues. I have an iPhone 8.

I think the eSIM idea is good.
posted by TORunner at 6:37 AM on June 28, 2023


Canada still runs an older network protocol that is being/has been phased out in the US (3G, I think?)
We are not sitting here in our igloos waiting for the internet to load. Major cities are blanketed with 5G and/or LTE network speeds.

I also travel on the west coast with Telus and have no trouble with US network coverage. The way roaming works, Telus hands off to a major US based carrier. Perhaps the carrier Telus chooses is not as good as T-Mobile in the area you visit. If so, eSIM is a great solution.
posted by shock muppet at 8:44 AM on June 28, 2023 [5 favorites]


I'm on Freedom and I've done two trips to Chicago in the last year and both times the roaming was terrible - internet was fine and like you I could only make a call if I had wifi at the same time. At the time I diagnosed it as a VoLTE issue, as in my SIM didn't have it even though my phone did and it is fine in Canada because we have the 3G backbone but they got rid of it in the US like eviemath said. This is something that getting a new SIM card for my existing plan can fix but it annoyed me when it happened and then afterwards I forgot about it and could never be bothered to stop at a kiosk and get a new SIM card, which bit me when I went back to Chicago the second time.

So if you have a newer phone your SIM card might already have VoLTE support. If you're rocking the same phone then contact Telus and ask for a replacement SIM card and then you'd probably be OK, but may not know for sure until you're in the States.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:21 PM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]


I think it’s only fair to compare the roaming performance of carriers with access to 5G speeds - that’s Telus, Rogers, and Bell. Their performance in the USA would be as good as the carrier that they selected for roaming. The problem any portmanteau in a storm described should be specific to the discount carriers.

Every carrier has dead spots, the quality of network access in urban areas like NYC can be very carrier specific due to the carrier’s placement of cell towers relative to obstructing buildings and tunnels.
posted by shock muppet at 2:50 PM on June 28, 2023


Yes, Canada has 5G. But Canada also still has 3G and LTE networks, which the US doesn’t (or, at least one of those is rapidly becoming deprecated across many parts of the US, especially starting with the larger cities). Which means that if someone has an older phone - say one that is not even 4G-enabled - it will work in Canada but not in much of the US. Which would be one possible explanation for the OP’s experience, given that it sounds like they had an older phone.

This has happened once before as well, back in my early days of having a cell phone, where my Canadian phone wouldn’t work in the US except in very small pockets, due to it not being able to connect to the older network protocols it relied on being replaced sooner in the US than in Canada.
posted by eviemath at 3:24 PM on June 28, 2023


(Probably when 2G became deprecated and carriers switched to 3G?)
posted by eviemath at 3:27 PM on June 28, 2023


BTW while you're in NYC consider posting an IRL event so NYC MeFites can meet you!
posted by brainwane at 4:56 AM on July 6, 2023


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