Canada-US Plans -- Does Roaming have to be abled?

[Thomas1112]

With the Canada-US promotion plans being offered now, does "roaming" have to be abled on the phone settings in order to use it, or does the phone see it all as a Public Mobile network and no "roaming" functionality is needed?

If roaming has to be enabled on the phone, is there any way that there could be roaming charges incurred if the phone is in an area (in either Canada or US) which does not have a Public Mobile compatible network?

Thanks!

[DennyCrane]

@Casperr0426 You probably connected to AT&T 5G. AT&T 4G would have been fine. Up until mid way through last year AT&T roaming didn't work at all on PM; that got fixed, but there appears to be some issues with it still (5G).

[Thomas1112]

I drove near the US border today, where the Canadian coverage is poor, and two PM phones on the new Can/US plan both roamed to the US, one went to T-Mobile and the other to AT&T. Both phones had the default settings (5G enabled), and there were no issues. Now there is likely no 5G service in the US at that area of the country, but it worked fine. If I have issues in the future, I will try disabling 5G.

[Casperr0426]

Interesting. Before I ported one of my lines to Public Mobile from Freedom Mobile the other day, we went to the States and my friend who was on Public Mobile had nothing but issues roaming on AT&T. I did not think about setting it to 4G but I set it to manually just connect to T-Mobile which fixed the problem. I had no issues roaming however using Freedom Mobile (albeit 4G only). I hope they sort this issue soon. 

[DennyCrane]

@Thomas1112 5G works in Canada, and it will work when roaming on T-Mobile; however there is an issue with 5G when roaming in AT&T. If you really want you could force your phone onto TMobile, but it's easier just to set network selection to Automatic and set it to 4G Preferred (it'll provide a more seamless/hands off experience).

[Phil_Adelphus]

@Thomas1112  why 4G only, the plan says it is 5G in US too...?

Some people have had problems connecting to AT&T when their phone is set to 5G, hence the suggestion to use 4G/LTE, but I haven't seen anyone say that about T-Mobile.  So the thing would be to try 5G and if you have problems getting it to work then switch to 4G/LTE or try the other carrier.  The most  important thing is to have a VoLTE capable/enabled phone otherwise there will be problems with voice calls because the US carriers have shut down their 3G network and the last 2G will be shutting down in about a month.

[fixin]

@Thomas1112 - Roaming has to be Enabled to roam in the USA. Usually no need for it in Canada. It will show either 'AT&T' or 'T-Mobile' in your status bar instead of 'Public Mobile.' That is what carriers have support for Public Mobile. There will be no roaming charges even if you have a Canada only plan, you will have to buy an add-on if you don't have a Canada-US subscription.

[Thomas1112]

@Handy1 why 4G only, the plan says it is 5G in US too...?

[Handy1]

@Thomas1112  Yes you need to turn on data roaming in phone settings . And set phone to 4G/LTE not 5G and connect to T mobile or AT&T 

adding you will never get a surprise bill with PM as it’s prepaid and you can only use what you have already paid for