Wifi in Northwestern Canada
This is a sheer techie post. This was such a hard-fought learning curve for us, I decided to make a special post for it. Although some of it might be applicable to U.S. travel, it’s possible that only folks who actually travel to Canada will find it of interest.
If you are one of those people who relish getting “disconnected”, and dream of tossing your cell phone off the end of the dock into the sea – – northwestern Canada will delight you.
But that’s not us.
When we began planning our Canada-Alaska trip, we knew we’d need to have Internet now and then — for checking emails, for paying occasional bills, and just for tending to the various surprises that can come up when being far away from home for many weeks.
Normally when we travel, we use our cell phones and a 3G/4G hotspot, pay Verizon some extra bucks and we’re able to get Internet anywhere there’s cell coverage. But for reasons I have yet to understand, Verizon wants 100 times more money for the same service in Canada. Yes, that’s correct. Instead of $20 for a GB of data, Verizon charges $2 per megabyte of data. Simple arithmetic, that’s $2,000per GB. No exceptions, take it or leave it. We left it.
So what about Canadian data/hotspot plans? All of the checking that I could do from the U.S. seemed to indicate that only Canadians can have Canadian data plans. I simply couldn’t get any other answer (but see below).
Okay, what about public wifi? Aha!!! We were assured by many people “in the know”, Canadians and travelers both, that public wifi was very common in Canada, at restaurants, libraries, visitor’s centers, and so on. With nothing else to go
on, we launched our trip with the intention of using only public wifi while in Canada.
Well, it worked okay at visitor’s centers for sure. When we could find them, when they were open. There weren’t many, and some closed at 4PM or 5PM, often before we arrived at the location. We found one library in the far north — they
had a one-hour limit per day. Eventually, we gave up on the “public” part except for the rare visitor’s center. I think that if you’re wandering around in Vancouver or Prince George, public wifi might be pretty usable. But out in the remote areas where we like to travel, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth.
Private wifi was a dismal disappointment. RV park managers generally have no clue about electronics or Internet details. They install a router, maybe put a high-gain antenna on it (maybe), done. RV park wifi just universally sucks. Only
on rare occasions were we even able to do web browsing. Usually it was email, and headers and text only. Horrible. And some, we paid extra for as well!
So, after going from Canada to Alaska and enjoying our U.S. 3G/4G hotspot again, I vowed to try to find a solution after we went back into Canada on our return home. It took several visits, many questions, and some phone calls, but eventually I did find the magic formula. Turns out, non-residents can have cell plans in Canada, but there are some limitations and some caveats.
First, what didn’t work: Telus and Bell had deal-breakers of one kind or another. For example, Telus had an upper data limit of 1GB for only $30, but additional data overages were charged at $500 per GB. No expansion possible. Another thing that doesn’t work is trying to pay for cell service in Canada with a U.S. credit card. Sorry, no can do.
The SOLUTION: Virgin Mobile has a pre-paid plan for either 1GB or 2GB, $60 or $70 (Canadian) respectively with an overage charge of $20/GB. So how to pay for it? They won’t take a U.S. credit card, remember. I had to buy a “top-up” code, available from any Canada Post office (and other places too). I also had to buy
a sim-card, and I had to have a compatible device (smart phone or hotspot) to plug it in.
Then it gets really simple: I called Virgin, asked to activate a new account, and gave them the sim card number. That got the device activated a couple of hours later. Then I called Virgin again and gave them the top-up code.
Presto: about 15 minutes later I had 3G/4G data for all my computers, tablets and phones.
I did decide to buy a Virgin-compatible device. They didn’t have hotspots at the store, so I bought a low-end smart phone for $150 (Canadian). I used the hotspot feature of the smart phone to feed data to my other devices. And because it’s a
smart phone, I downloaded some of my frequently used apps to use them direct. This way, if I just need GasBuddy, I use the Canada phone to get the info I need. Same for weather and Google Maps.
It’s possible to use any compatible or un-locked device and just plug in the Virgin Mobile sim card — but I was not sure about the lock-status of the phones or hotspot that we already owned, so I elected to spend the extra bucks for a sure thing. Total cost for the phone and a month’s data, about US$180. The next month, US$56. More if we exceed the 2G plan, at US$16/GB. Expensive compared to my U.S. Verizon plan, but I can live with it for a month or two.
This isn’t a solution that’s very attractive if you’re only visiting Canada for a week or two (much too expensive). But there may be other plans (I didn’t check), and if you’re in the country a month or longer, it can make sense. It did for us, and we had a data connection anywhere there’s a cell signal. Not that THAT is all that common way up north, but this arrangement is a lot better than nothing.
I suspect that there are more solutions than just this one. In the U.S. you can find pre-paid sim cards, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Canada retailers had some, somewhere. But I didn’t find them. Maybe Amazon.ca?
[If you don’t know what a sim card is, no worries. Anyone at a cell phone store can help you, or you can look up the details online. The sim card is a small fingernail-sized piece of plastic with a microchip inside it. It plugs into your phone (usually underneath the battery) and creates the secure linkage between your phone and your provider account. For this reason, it’s really the sim card, not your phone, that has your account credentials. You can move your account to another phone just by swapping out the sim card. The caveat to this is that providers “lock” some phones to their own service, trying to capture more business that way — prevents you from going from AT&T to Verizon, for example.]
I hope this magic formula helps somebody. I haven’t shared the stumbles, call-waits and time-consuming misunderstandings that accompanied my learning experience – if you read this, perhaps I’ve saved you from having to go through them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is free WiFi available everywhere. You will have no problem getting connected.
Promise
Royellithorpe@gmail.com
This is what we heard before we left. Not so true in the remote areas.