Canadian Cellular: Any carriers that aren't bullshit?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Canadian Cellular: Any carriers that aren't bullshit?

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mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Misanthrope posted:

Thanks for the breakdown.

So the $1/mo roaming you do in Vancouver, is that because you hit a dead spot and it switches to the Rogers network?

Seeing as I don't even know the speed differences, I'm sure you're right that 3G will be more than enough, especially since I'm either at home or at work on wifi the majority of the time, but there are two different models of the S3 being released in Canada and the model Wind is releasing won't have LTE capability (according to wiki anyways):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III#Model_variants

If really quick Internets is important to you, LTE shouldn't be discounted. It's home-class broadband speeds, and usually quicker uploads.

If, on the other hand, it isn't, then the savings on Wind will likely be better for you. I have LTE from Bell on my iPad, and Wind service on my Galaxy Nexus - there's a huge, huge difference in speeds, but usually also in cost.

Should you find yourself able to snag one of those 6GB data plans, though, and don't do tons of voice dialling, I'd honestly probably go with LTE.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2012 19:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:38

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

A Jupiter posted:

I'm about to get a new phone in the next month, and was just about to take the advice from the Android thread to buy a Galaxy Nexus from Google Play, and then I realised I lived in Canada.
Does anyone know if WIND's Galaxy Nexus is different from all the other ones. I assume it's the same since the one from Google Play is compatible with WIND.

P.S. If anyone has anecdotes of WIND in the Waterloo area that's great too.

Edit: Whoops I guess not. Canadian Nexus' are "yakjuux" while in order to get updates directly from Google you have to have "yakju". No big deal, time to get my flash on.

I live in K-W, and my GNex works great on WIND. I have no real issues with the service.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2012 07:24

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Lone Rogue posted:

WIND is getting rid of the Get Satisfaction forum.

You have no idea how happy this makes me.

Are they going to have anything in its place?

# ¿ Jul 17, 2012 23:46

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

aunaturale posted:

What's the easiest way to keep my phone number active while studying abroad for eight months annually over the next several years? I'm getting too connected to be able to reset my network by FBing Hey guys knew number!@ every summer break but don't want to pay for a plan I don't use.

My current thought is to switch the number to either a prepaid service or a $15 monthly plan and then transfer it to a carrier with the plan I actually use during the summer. But what specifically is the cheapest way to keep an active number?

Port it into Google Voice.

Edit: poo poo this is the Canadian crappy cell phone thread, never mind. I think the prepaid service is probably your best bet.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2012 12:06

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Aphrodite posted:

Are cell repeaters directional? I have a friend who lives in an area near the border where the AT&T signal is stronger than Bell's, so he often gets switched over to roaming.

Would a repeater help at all?

Can he turn off roaming? What kind of phone is it?

# ¿ Aug 17, 2012 02:13

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

God drat it.

Is there some sort of CRTC complaint that I can lodge against Bell? EVERY month since I signed up for an LTE tablet plan, we have to call and have them correct our billing. It's wildly inaccurate every single time without fail.

This month, despite the fact that our plan goes up to 5GB (we used 3.4 this month), we were charged $34 at the cost of $1.00/MB. Obviously, this doesn't even make sense.

Just, like, I am getting tired of having to take this time out of my day to get this fixed, and it is a regular monthly occurrence. I want someone at Bell to get something official from someone to make sure they fix my loving billing and keep it working. It should not be this difficult.

# ¿ Aug 31, 2012 16:45

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Lexicon posted:

It just occurred to me that Bell no longer seems to be trying to incept the country with the atrocious term "Superphone".

I'm pretty sure you can blame that entirely on NVIDIA - I saw a crapton of that at CES the last couple of years when the Tegra phone push started.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2012 21:06

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

priznat posted:

Took about 5 hours or so before it turned on but seems to be working now. Will the LTE show as 4G? How is the coverage? Do I need to call them to enable that?

LTE should show explicitly as LTE - it certainly does on the iPad.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2012 20:45

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

ZShakespeare posted:

Does Bell not have an iPhone unlock policy like Rogers and Telus? I've got the dough to buy one outright but Apple will only sell them (in store) locked, and I plan to switch carriers next year unless they really wow me with a deal.

So why not just buy one from Apple.com?

# ¿ Sep 25, 2012 21:53

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

ZShakespeare posted:

I have one on order, estimated delivery: October 31.

You'll survive.

. And you might even get it earlier, according to some.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2012 22:23

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

ZShakespeare posted:

Yeah, that would make sense. I took an early lunch to get to the store for opening on Monday, and I was third in line when the genius reminds everyone they are only selling locked devices. Told me I had to go online to get an unlocked one. I'd never heard of that before.

I can only assume the carriers are getting their tentacles into Apple now.

I'm betting it's got less to do with that than the fact that they'll sell more locked phones and want to maximize supply.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2012 22:51

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

terriyaki posted:

$0 on Telus and Bell. $0.01 on Rogers.

More proof that Rogers sucks.

But seriously, that seems like a pretty sweet deal. I guess the SGS4 really is just around the corner, though.

Speaking of the big three, I'll be interested in seeing which of them will have the Nokia 920 right from the get go.

Uh I doubt we'll be seeing the SGS4 for six months, dude. It's probably because of the iPhone launch.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2012 18:44

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Ahahaha for gently caress's sake.

Bell doubled our bill again. EVERY SINGLE loving MONTH SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE IPAD 3, THEY'VE DONE THIS.

This time they hung up on us when we called to get it straightened out. Done. So done. What an entirely worthless company.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2012 16:19

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

less than three posted:

HSPA devices from Canada will work on AT&T (3/4G) and T-Mobile (2G, 3G in some areas)

They will not work on Sprint or Verizon.

The exception of course is Wind/Mobilicity phones, which are fully Tmo compatible. But that doesn't apply here so...

# ¿ Oct 19, 2012 20:59

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Ensign Expendable posted:

You can buy a new SIM card and have it connected to your account for $10-15, depending on provider. Pop it into any phone that is compatible with your carrier's frequencies, and you're set.

Play up the sob story of getting mugged though and it may not cost anything.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 19:55

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Evilpiggie posted:

So that means I could buy a sim card off the internet for cheap?
This is turning out a lot better than I thought

Yup. Though I'd recommend you just go in person to a store. It's something they can do in basically 15 minutes, and you're guaranteed to leave with a working sim on your account.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2012 20:16

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Nitr0 posted:

Now you can hit your data cap in a half hour!!!

BTW those speeds are gone as soon as people actually start using lte.

Define "as soon as people actually start using". Both my LTE iPad on Bellus and my LTE phone on Verizon in the States have been getting that for months.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2012 18:40

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Powershift posted:

Telus wouldn't sell me one outright either. I had to pay out my old contact and re up. The only real loss is the 50 dollar cancellation fee if they start dicking me around.

The phone is amazing, and in amazed at how widespread their lte network is. I didn't know they covered red Deer but they cover almost the whole hwy 2 corridor from Edmonton to Calgary. And even grande Prairie. It shouldn't take them long to blanket the province. Rogers doesn't even have all of Edmonton or Calgary yet.

That's prolly since Bell and Telus share their LTE jointly, so it's two companies funding the rollout.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2012 19:10

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Hamelekim posted:

I bought mine full price from Rogers, without contract. I already have a contract with Rogers though. Not sure if Any of the bands available on Rogers network will work with Wind.

I ordered October 30th in the Morning, and Got mine on Nov 7th in the mail. Of course it is locked to Rogers, but you can get the phone unlocked for around $50.

Might be worth checking out for those who are on another carrier and cannot buy the phone outright from them.

I don't think any of the others will have the unlocked AWS bands, though.

As an aside, I was really looking into the Note 2 and getting mildly excited about the stylus, but the Nexus 4 is just too damned cheap not to get.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2012 22:06

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Hamelekim posted:

It all depends on what you want in a phone. The size of the screen and the features of the Note 2 were what I was looking for in a phone. It has LTE as well, which is a big thing. When I can get 22Mbps download and 16Mbps upload while on the go, that's pretty sweet.

Also, Wikipedia says that the version that Rogers/Telus/Bell uses supports AWS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Note_II

You might have to do some more research on the XDA forums under the AT&T sub forum with regards to AWS, but they use the same model as we have here on Rogers/Telus/Bell, just with an M suffix.

That AWS is LTE only, not GSM. I use wind. (I have an LTE iPad when I need to do something quicker.)

# ¿ Nov 9, 2012 00:30

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

the talent deficit posted:

WIND doesn't have micro (nano?) sims for the nexus 4 as far as I know so you'll have to cut your own from one of their regular sims. It also has limited coverage outside Vancouver so unless you're spending most of the trip in the city you might want to go with koodo or virgin instead

I think they must since they're offering the Galaxy Note II.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2012 19:08

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

ZShakespeare posted:

Entirely unscientific, but ~10-15ms according to the speed test app. I don't know how that compares because I never thought to test it before.

I also talked to a friend of mine and he mentioned that his iPhone 3GS also doesn't have a buffering period, so I'm just going to chalk that one up to to An android/ios thing.

You can disable LTE and run the test again. I'd do it for my iPad but I just cancelled Bell for being complete toolbags wrt billing. I guess I'll pick up a Rogers sim or something with the Mini w/cellular comes in.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 16:30

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

ZShakespeare posted:

I'm full of poo poo it seems

EVOLVE DRAGON

# ¿ Nov 15, 2012 17:25

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Zarkov Cortez posted:

Got a shipping confirmation for my N4, it's supposed to arrive next Tuesday

The gently caress are you frowning for?

# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 14:14

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Hahahah yesssssssss sGoogle Voice now forward to my stupid Canadian number hurrayyyyyyyyyyyyyy

# ¿ Nov 21, 2012 04:21

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

If you have an android phone, try verifying through the app - don't use the online thing as that didn't work for me, either. I have an Ontario phone number and it's working fine.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2012 01:31

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

rawrr posted:

What's the point of using a GV number in Canada though - wouldn't people calling the number be charged long distance rates?

Depends on their plan. But I'm an American living here anyway.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2012 05:38

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Out of curiosity, I was playing around on the Staples.ca site and it set that I could get an iPad Mini + 4G delivered to a store tomorrow. Does that mean that they have them in stock at the warehouses? I'd call, but I've no idea who to call about an online purchase.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2012 22:27

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Lexicon posted:

Mine from apple.ca is still "ships late November". Has been for a while. Take that for what it's worth.

Yeah...it used to be on staples.ca that you couldn't put it in your cart at all. Oh well, just curious; don't want to start another delivery trend. I'll be able to pick one up before we fly east for Christmas, anyway. Thanks!

# ¿ Nov 26, 2012 23:07

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Also not trying to be a dick or anything, but GVoice is still working great on my Wind phone. They must be testing a rollout for soon, or something.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2012 16:17

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Geektox posted:

He previously mentioned he has an Ontario number, no. 403 is Calgary. I don't understand how it's working either

Yeah if you look around, apparently a bunch of people got it to start working by activating the number through the Android app. Google must have disabled that loophole. I dunno, it's sometng they could pretty easily disable if they were so inclined. It is a mystery!

# ¿ Dec 2, 2012 15:45

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Welp. Rogers refused to let me get an iPad plan since I only have American ID. Is there any way around this? It's kind of ridiculous.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2012 01:16

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

OilSlick posted:

Nope.

You'll have to look into prepaid, if anyone still offers it. Don't both going to a different store, as dumb as some Rogers employees may be, they likely did not screw up the part where you fill in a field that will only accept Canadian identification. A credit check must be done when signing up for any kind of plan, and only Canadian credit information will do.

They don't, not on LTE. This is supremely frustrating.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2012 13:09

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Tedgewick posted:

I'd love some help with an upcoming cellquandry if anyone has advice to give. I'm someone's tech support department and their 3 year Rogers contract is winding down in March. Currently they have an iPhone 3gs and love it. They are not tech savvy enough to use a lot of data or care if its delivered at 3g or 4g speed so the plan is to keep the current handset to save money and avoid another contract. So I'm going to be the one to haggle on their behalf with Rogers' retention to get a better month-to-month deal than their current and expensive free evenings after 9pm plan. Can someone give me a rough ballpark figure of a good value retention plan these days? What is the going price for a mostly-voice, low text, low data use plan in Ontario?

I've been on the Mobilicity $33 Friends and Family unlimited everything plan forever so I have no idea what things actually cost anymore. Thanks.

What about putting them on some cheap Fido plan?

# ¿ Dec 7, 2012 14:28

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

GV is awesome. You can add any american or 403 (or some canadian (as mentioned, my waterloo number works fine (more parentheses!))) number to it, so anyone who calls your GV # will ring every phone you've added. Like, I have my work and home phones added; if you're going to be in a place with a landline for an extended time, you can add that, etc.

GV will forward SMS messages, too, but not MMS messages. You can also send and reply, entirely for free, either online or via the Google Voice app.

GV will record your voicemails for you and automatically transcribe them via computer. Sometimes this works well, mostly, though, it's just pretty funny. These can be sent to you via email, so you'll get an email on your phone with the contents of your voicemail, which is great. Even with the haphazard voice rec, you'll usually get an idea of the contents. You can also just listen to them � la visual voicemail online or via the app.

GV can be set to only forward calls based on group - so you can set your family/important friends to a special group that can call you, while other calls don't get through.

Finally, if someone is calling your GV number that you, for whatever reason, don't wish to ever talk to, you can mark them as spam, in which case they get sent straight to voicemail and listed as spam (and you don't get a voicemail notification), or you can 'block' them, in which case whenever they try to call your number, they get a 'doo-doo-doo, this number is not in service' message.

And it's all completely free.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2012 17:41

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

http://mobilesyrup.com/2013/06/04/industry-canada-denies-telus-spectrum-license-transfer-mobilicity-deal-not-moving-forward/

Huh, looks like the Mobilicity sale is likely dead in the water, as the government denied the spectrum transfer to Telus.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2013 13:45

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Martytoof posted:

Oh! Oh! I know the answer to this!

# ¿ Jun 6, 2013 23:11

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

I just went to Rome for a week and picked up a SIM for the iPad while I was there, since my boyfriend had some business to take care of and we wanted to be able to stay in communication.

We didn't get this package, but they were doing a special where for 35�, you get 30GB of LTE. Or you could pay 199� and get 10GB of LTE every month for a year.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2013 13:01

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Lexicon posted:

Really? So shove an iPad sim into an iPhone and you've got a data-enabled iPod touch? Why don't more people do this?

Because a poo poo ton of people still use their phones as actual phones and don't want to have to bother with trying to get people to call them on Skype or something.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 01:45

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:38

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Lexicon posted:

No one's obliging you to do it. But there's a, I would think, pretty large portion of the cellular-using population who care far, far more about mobile data than mobile voice, and would find the substantial savings attractive.

I mean, hell, the iPad with cellular has already proven itself as a useful device/service combination. Why would you assume a smaller form-factor version of this same package is somehow a bizarre desire?

Who said I can't see the appeal? I barely use my phone as a phone, but I keep a plan because no third party VoIP app ever ends up working as reliably as a regular phone call...and if NEED to call someone, I don't want to be futzing around with trying to get Skype to work in some kind of low-signal area.

Sometimes this place is just a huge cell nerd echo chamber full of people trying to use iPads as their only phones and suggesting it's a normal thing to do.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2013 05:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Inspect Your Gadgets > Canadian Cellular: Any carriers that aren't bullshit?

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