BlogTravelsWifi in Northwestern Canada    

Comments

Wifi in Northwestern Canada — 14 Comments

  1. Sorry you had trouble up in our country, but we have no better luck in yours. Verizon finally let us have a pay as you go account, but it was not easy. We are from another country so our credit cards were not usable, yet we can buy anything else. We finally found the right person at the Verizon corporate store in Casa Grande and our life got better. Not perfect but better. The key seems to be to go to a corporate store not one of their resellers. We have tried TracPhones from Wal Mart, service and reception is less much less than stellar. New adventure this year we are going to try a Canadian reseller called Roam Mobility. Wish us luck.

    • Bob, I am learning from these many comments that we each have trouble in each others countries for no apparent reason whatsoever. It’s very strange that the cell companies turn their backs on these large sources of revenue from vacationing travelers who cross the borders. I’m very puzzled by it as are many other people. The credit card refusal is especially mysterious, since the “other country” credit cards are accepted universally at stores and restaurants everywhere.

  2. We winter in Yuma, AZ. Cannot get reasonable access to wifi or tv service. I tried to explain to some of the carriers that their 12 month contracts made no sense to snowbirds. If they offered 6 month plans, then two plans would give them a year of subscribers. 100,000 six month subscribers ends up to be 50,000 years of contracts but they can’t quite fathom that.

    • I have not made any effort to investigate U.S. pay-as-you-go plans, ’cause my Verizon package covers me. But I’d think there must be something; I see a lot of blister-pack phones and store-racks of sim-cards. If there’s a Verizon pay-by-month plan, that would be my choice if I were traveling from outside the country.

  3. I’d like to thank all the readers for their comments here on this post. Clearly, there is a lot of experience, both positive and negative.

    Let me clarify that my comments were largely relative to the remote areas in northwestern Canada (B.C., Yukon, NWT), and were not as pertinent to the developed areas such as are nearer the southern border.

    Of course the business of wireless can’t be supported by the scant populations up there; I did not mean to ignore this and I thank the commenter who identified it. But what that really means is that the situation cannot change, and travelers like myself will need to make adjustments accordingly.

    I need to emphasize that I tend to travel to thinly-populated areas because I LIKE it there. And those areas simply don’t have the libraries, fast-food restaurants, and other free-wifi sources that have been quoted.

    Perhaps most importantly for my personal reasons, I chose the self-contained hotspot solution because it was there whenever I found cell coverage – – – which was a LOT more often than finding a McDonalds or an open library or open visitor center, AND I didn’t have to do anything except pull over to the side of the road for a few minutes.

    Different strokes for different folks. Your mileage may vary, along with your choices of solutions. Happy traveling to all.

  4. Now you know what the 10s of thousands of Canadian snowbirds go through. I finally gave up and opened a US bank account using the address of an RV park we once stayed at. You can’t do anything with AT&T and many online retailers without a US zip code as part of your credit card address.
    Regarding the locked phone, it would take 60 seconds to determine that by inserting your activated sim card, but, if you “bought” the phone for little or no money down, you know it is locked.
    Regarding WiFi, it is available at every Tim Horton’s, and McDonald’s as well as almost every other fast food restaurant.
    Regarding the plans available to Americans, I suppose it is possible that the Canadian carriers are ripping you off, but as a Canadian Redneck, I refuse to sign a contract and have no trouble finding a month to month plan comparable to any of the major US carriers, and I refuse to buy any phone that is locked.
    Regarding coverage, yeah, when you get into the northern parts the coverage gets like northern Nevada and other sparsley populated states.
    Possibly the reason Verizon is so expensive is the fact that they use CDMA technology. ALL Canadian carriers use the GSM system, so locked or not you can’t use a Canadian sim card.

  5. Thank you for this post. Terri and I are truck campers and we spent the entire month of August camping and touring on Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast in BC. We had a great time in every respect except for the cell phone/Wi-Fi issues. We had dutifully contacted Verizon and signed up for coverage for the month while out of the country. The main problem was with the computer, but only when we wanted to use it(sorry, could not resist). We are obviously not as savvy about problem solving tech issues as you are, so we basically went without computer most of the time we were there. Your post confirms for us that the problem was not “all us” and that there are definite obstacles to service in that part of Canada. Very informative in terms of describing the problem and what was involved for you to come to a solution. Thank you again.
    John Tully

  6. Thank you for this valuable info! We are planning a trip to the Maritime provinces next summer and I run an RV insurance business from my rig. We are fulltimers. While I have had no problems to and from Alaska 4 times, I was worried about this trip as I must be connected. You have saved me much time and angst! May I ask where you bought the Virginia Mobile plan and device? Thanks again!

    • Chris, I got both at a Source store in Whitehorse but the plan is available online. By far a good method is to call Virgin but wait for evenings. Don’t forget that you may be able to use an existing phone.

  7. I appreciate your article. As a Canadian, I had to go thru the same sort of nonsense in the US to get wifi. ATT would only provide service with a $500 USD security deposit. Verizon wouldn’t talk to me. Eventually, got a workable solution thru T-Mobile. Fortunately, I had an unlocked cell phone and a USD credit card.

  8. For sound business reasons, there is no cell service and no internet access in Canada in those places where there are no people. That’s a big area.

    As one who works in the Canadian RV industry, I can tell you that RV campground owners recognize the importance of providing wifi to their campers even though they face the same practical limitations as everyone else. If they are located in a thriving community, they will likely have very good service. For example, we provide free wifi to our campers and they enjoy 20 Mb/s download and 5 Mb/s upload speeds. If we were to change to another (newly arrived) local provider, that would become 100 down and 20 up. But there are many out of town locations in Canada where wifi is simply not available at any price.

    Where do I go for free wifi when on the road in Canada? Libraries, museums, archives, fast-food chains, credit unions, shopping centres, community centres, senior centres, tourist centres, and motels/hotels. But the very best (reliable, free, unsecured, high-capacity) source of public wifi is hospitals.

  9. Thank you for this info!! We are planning an extended trip (4-5 months) through Canada to Alaska and back and I’ve been trying to find out about wi-fi accessibility and costs with very little info available.

    I’m enjoying following you on your trip. Thank you so much for sharing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>