Roam Mobility - cell phone option for US travel | GTAMotorcycle.com

Roam Mobility - cell phone option for US travel

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regder

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Tested it out on a recent road trip and it worked surprisingly well. Costs $4.95cdn per day, which gives you unlimited NA talk and text, and 500mb of data. Coverage outside of cities and interstates was super spotty, but otherwise had good coverage with LTE speeds. They have an extra coverage add on for $1 per day, but I didn't try it.

For comparison, Fido rapes me $7.99 the second I touch data, that $7.99 is good for 50mb

Will be making good use of Roam Mobility this coming season.

https://www.roammobility.com/talk-text-data
 
One caveat: I think the service only works with an unlocked phone.

via Tapatalk
 
Also depends on where you are - we did not have good coverage in the western states. Check their partners against where you are going. If I recall the eastern states had good coverage.
 
Been using Roam for a few years and I really like it. Yes, you need an unlocked phone and you might have to manually add an APN in your settings to get the data working properly the first time. Check their coverage map before your trip and make sure you know what to expect. The service has gotten significantly better in the last couple of years I've noticed.
 
I used to use T-mobile... pick up a SIM card for $10, and throw $10 or $20 credit on there.

They used to have $2/day for unlimited data usage and then texts or calls came from your balance... now it looks like they changed things but they have a $10 weekly pass that gives 1gb of data. The coverage worked very well for me: https://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-as-you-go
 
I think ROAMs major partner is TMobile.
My issue is the amount of data use I need running the business remotely so McDs or whatever coffee shop is enroute fits the bill and all my nav is offline....so haven't seen the need this last year.
 
That ROAM sounds interesting. Telus currently charges $7/day to use my current plan in the states, for each day I use it. So for me the $7/day lets me access 2GB monthly of data and unlimited texting/calling within North America. The fact that ROAM gives you unlimited calling/texting and 500MB/day is pretty impressive.

So is your current phone unlocked or do you have a spare unlocked phone that you keep for US travel?

And why don't they have so much of VA in their coverage? Looks like they have most of WV in there though through affiliates, but are missing a lot of the Appalachian range (BRP, Smoky Mountains etc).
 
Jayell said:
One caveat: I think the service only works with an unlocked phone.

via Tapatalk
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Yup, you will need an unlocked phone. My iPhone unlock cost me $20 I think

Motorcycle Mike said:
I used to use T-mobile... pick up a SIM card for $10, and throw $10 or $20 credit on there.

They used to have $2/day for unlimited data usage and then texts or calls came from your balance... now it looks like they changed things but they have a $10 weekly pass that gives 1gb of data. The coverage worked very well for me: https://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-as-you-go
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Roam Mobility uses T-Mobile's network

skywalker46 said:
No service in Virginia & West Virginia.
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My trip was actually to Richmond, VA. Had perfect coverage in Richmond and don't think I had a noticeable deadspot on the interstate going there or back. Back roads were definitely dead with zero signal. Same story for NY, but did have signal in most one horse towns I passed.
 
Stupid question : you get a US phone number then, right?

Sent from a Samsung Galaxy far, far away using Tapatalk
 
shanekingsley said:
So is your current phone unlocked or do you have a spare unlocked phone that you keep for US travel?

And why don't they have so much of VA in their coverage? Looks like they have most of WV in there though through affiliates, but are missing a lot of the Appalachian range (BRP, Smoky Mountains etc).
Click to expand...

I used an unlocked iPhone for this trip and forwarded my 416 number to it.

As for VA, yeah it's spotty, not sure how the other networks fare. I know the few times I needed cell service on the BRP and Smokey's in the past, my roaming iPhone couldn't find anything.

Joe Bass said:
Stupid question : you get a US phone number then, right?
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Yup, they give you a random US number
 
Thanks @regder

Sent from a Samsung Galaxy far, far away using Tapatalk
 
And you get to choose the area code. Having a US number actually comes in handy sometimes even when not travelling. Filling out certain web forms for instance...
 
I've used them for a few years, generally good experiences however they did jack up the costs just recently.


AT&T is also one of their partners, however it's been my experience that their configuration highly prioritizes T-Mobile versus AT&T, even though AT&T provides a drastically better experience – my solution was to go into carrier settings and manually lock my iPhone to AT&T which worked perfectly. Very occasionally I would find myself outside of a AT&T service area and would unlock it back to T-Mobile, however I usually switched back promptly afterwards. Without manually prioritizing AT&T I found that sometimes the phone would almost always hang onto a virtually useless T-Mobile signal while switching yielded a strong AT&T signal. I'm guessing their rates with T-Mobile are less.

For days when we are traveling and I need no compromise service I pay for the higher end plan with high-speed data, however once we arrive at point B and I just need basic text and slower speed data is fine, I downgrade to the lesser plan - no talk minutes but still unlimited text, and only 2G data – slower, however cheaper, and over a week or so it adds up… And for the essentials 2G data is just fine. The drive back home I just upgrade the plan again.
 
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My wife is with Wind mobile here, she has one of their plans from the very beginning with unlimited US roaming and it's great – she uses her phone no differently across the border and her roaming is almost exclusively on the AT&T network which is generally good. Actually, I think it's a little bit ironic but her service is better roaming in the US then it is here at home ;) Only downside is she is capped at one gig of high-speed data per month, above which it gets throttled at a still usable but drastically slower rate. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, one gig is still pretty generous for roaming, but depending on the amount of time that we are traveling we do typically exhaust it.

I expect with Shaw having bought Wind, those sorts of plans will be on the firing line eventually, and prices will be jacked of course. Time will tell, in the meantime...we're keeping it.
 
Going to be using this next time I go to the states. I usually just add a plan from rogers fro the time I will be away, but this looks to be a much better deal.
 
wonderings said:
Going to be using this next time I go to the states. I usually just add a plan from rogers fro the time I will be away, but this looks to be a much better deal.
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It really depends on how much you travel and the cost of getting your handset unlocked. For people that only travel perhaps once a year in the US, and only for a day or so, just getting a short-term roaming option directly with your main carrier is probably abiut the same cost - they have become more reasonable in recent years.

When you travel multiple times per year, or for extended periods, getting a US based service or using a service like Roam quickly pays off however.
 
Fyi, depending on your phone, unlocking can cost as little as $0 - $15 online. Your carrier will probably charge something like $50.
 
I used ROAM mobility going to the GAP and on the Interstate it was fine. HOWEVER, when IN the GAP area you had 0 signal. I even paid the extra coverage for $1.00 / day extra and didn't get anything out of it
 
It really depends on how much you travel and the cost of getting your handset unlocked. F
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lots of unlocked 4 and 4s iphones cheap $30-70 - we carry them as spares and good for something like a ROAM sim.
 
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