Canadian Broadband → In need of a cell phone to use in both Sudbury & London

I'm looking at getting a no-frills cell phone that I can use for both London and Sudbury. I've thought about getting Virgin Mobile for this since I know some people and they haven't got any complaints. If it's a 705 based number and I take it down to London, will I get hit with roaming fees for taking calls?

I know I'd get hit with long-distance fees if I tried to call anything but 705 with it in either of the two cities, but what I mainly need it for is to keep in contact with people from Sudbury.

I thought about asking at Best Buy or some other cell phone store, but the sales rep would most likely just lie to me in order to get the sale.

It will be a pay-as-you-go type of a deal since I have neither the patience or the willingness to commit to some bullshit 3 year contract for a 'free' phone.

If I check my voice mail from say a landline, will that eat into my airtime credit? I've heard that's the case with anything to do with Rogers.

You won't get roaming charges in most of Canada since Virgin is a nationwide network (roaming charges only apply when you "roam" onto another provider's network; many people confuse roaming and long distance).

Unfortunately, Virgin's prepaid service charges 35¢/min for LD on top of the per-minute rate. However, Virgin's Choice plans include nationwide calling and don't require you to sign a contract. You can even get a phone on their "supertab" where they reduce the amount owing on the phone by 10% of your bill per month. You can leave at any time, you just have to pay the amount owing for the phone. This saves you money up front and you don't have to sign any term commitments.

On the topic of location, local calls from cellphones are local to your physical location. For example, I have a Toronto 416 number, but I can call 519/226 numbers in Kitchener/Waterloo as local calls. Calls back to my home area code are long-distance. Of course, all of this is moot if you have nationwide calling.

Checking your voicemail on Bell products (Bell Mobility, Virgin) and Telus products (Telus, Koodo) doesn't use airtime, unless of course you call from your cellphone (in which case it's always a local call). I can't speak for Rogers products in this regard.

Hopefully this helps a bit. I can say that the Bellus network is very good in both London and Sudbury, but I'm sure Rogers is too. Best of luck finding something that works for you.

»www.speakout7eleven.ca/p ··· lk-rates

Pre-paid service...25cents/ minute local + 20cents/ minute LD. (They also have other LD plans available) Initial purchase has to be made at a 7/11 store which London has 3 of. You could also buy another sim for $10 and get a Sudbury number and keep doing a sim swap when needed or just buy in London and get a Sudbury number by calling their service center.

Best part is the pre-paid time is 365days expiry and you can add more $ before 365 and carry the whole balance (old + addon) forward for another 365.

Their coverage area is FIDO (Rogers) as that's who "supplies" them.

Depending on how much you expect to use, you might want to get a cheap phone outright and go with any provider's postpaid plans wtith no contract.

Koodo has a postpaid plan for $20/mo Canada-wide (no roaming/LD charges in Canada), unlimited weekends.

»shop.koodomobile.com/pla ··· -p0.html

However, if it's more of an emergency/short calls type thing, then 7-11 prepaid's decent, but if the Rogers coverage isn't good enough, then you can also go for Telus prepaid, $100 for 365 day expiry but 30c local + 40c LD.

Thanks for the suggestions. Basically what I need it for is to be able to receive calls from Sudbury friends or potential employers so they don't get hit with long distance charges. If I did have to call the 705 area code, I'd just do it from my home phone for the rate of 2.9c/minute. I would only need it for a short while before I dump it and just have POTS from Teksavvy.

And hopefully this time they don't pull a no-show on me like they did a few months ago when I wanted to get my home phone installed.