We live in the Toronto area in Ontario. On December 16th, I headed to Buffalo with my wife and daughter. I took some extra phones and lots of roaming options to try things out.
[IMPORTANT: My family ordered Public Mobile U.S. Roaming on our 4 different lines, some as bundles, some as individual items. We had NO problems with plans being deactivated or cancelled after a few days or the whole 10-days. Looks like any glitches are now fixed - everything worked perfectly (with some rebooting and manually selecting noted below).]
(1) Daughter's phone - OnePlus One on PM SIM, with the following PM options: 10-day US Roaming voice, 10-day US Roaming SMS, 1GB US Roaming Data. (Ordered as separate items NOT a bundle)
Worked like a charm in Buffalo and in New York for a weekend trip.
No reboot needed upon arrival in US (just needed to turn on data roaming in her phone).
No reboot needed in NYC upon landing.
She was very happy with the service and the roaming and used her phone to Navigate and for Social Media, email, some video and music in NYC. Given that some were having strange things happen with PM, before going I suggested an option to her (cheaper for a 3-day trip) would be Roam Mobility. My daughter declined and preferred to use her PM SIM and wasn't let down.
She was very happy with the service at all times (only had problems in the NYC Subway; but everywhere else was great). She liked (and my wife and I liked) that she was reachable at her regular number and with regular text/messaging.
She used about 600MB in total of the 1GB over her 3 days. She reported data was reliable and fast.
On reentry to Canada (on the QEW from Buffalo - which keeps pretty close to the US border) - she needed to reboot the phone to get it to register again on PM (Telus) in Ontario.
(2) Wife's phone - Galaxy Note 3 on PM with the following PM options ordered as a BUNDLE: 10-day US Roaming voice, 10-day US Roaming SMS, 250 MB US Roaming Data, added another 500MB package for her a couple of days later after she accidently used up her 250 MB.
Worked great in Buffalo for a weekend trip.
No reboot needed upon arrival in US (just needed to turn on data roaming in her phone).
On second trip back to Buffalo a few days later; my wife DID NEED to reboot to get things working on the US side.
No problems with coverage, everything worked great.
No reboot needed on return to Canada.
(3) My Phone (main phone) - OnePlus Three on PM, with the following PM options: 10-day US Roaming voice, 10-day US Roaming SMS, 250MB US Roaming Data. (Ordered as seperate items - NOT a bundle. I wanted to test whether there was a bug with the bundle vs separate options.)
No reboot needed with my phone on entry to US - US Roaming worked fine but needed a manual carrier selection on my phone [strangely didn't on my wife or daughter's phone].
No reboot needed on return to Canada.
(4) My Phone (backup phone) - Galaxy Note 4 on PM, with the following PM options: 10-day US Roaming voice, 10-day US Roaming SMS, 250MB US Roaming Data. (Ordered as a BUNDLE. I wanted to test whether there was a bug with the bundle vs separate options.)
Reboot needed with my phone on arrival in US to start data working properly - US Roaming worked fine.
No reboot needed on return to Canada.
(5) For comparison purposes - I also took 2 KnowRoaming SIM stickers, a KnowRoaming SIM, and a Roam Mobility SIM.
(a) Roam Mobility SIM worked perfectly. Easy to use. Great pricing if only going for a day or two (cheaper than PM); downside is the daily data is capped and they assign a different phone number which means any calls and SMS to my PM number don't follow me.
(b) KnowRoaming definitely wasn't fun to use at all. Switching to their stickers was difficult and cumbersome.
KnowRoaming still has a way to go to make this a seamless easy to use experience.
I had 2 phones with KnowRoaming (KR) stickers and 1 phone with a KR SIM Card
1 phone with a Sticker needed an extra reboot to get it to work - and then needed to 'activate' a data package with a Wifi Hotspot (using a Hotspot created with my PM roaming package!!!) to get it working.
With the other 1 phone with a Sticker I couldn't get it working under any circumstances. 😞 Guess I've lost the $7.99 I paid in advance for 1-day unlimited data.
The phone with the KnowRoaming SIM Card [Which I thought would be the easiest Knowroaming option] took MANY MANY reboots and multiple erasing and recreating the KnowRoaming APN to get working. This isn't an option for my wife or my mother-in-law!
Other comments -
Public Mobile and RoamMobility had full LTE speed, Know Roaming is 3G and was slower.
Latency on Know Roaming was awful (>350ms) [they apparently route through Europe according to the IP address and traceroutes I did] - although overall speed was up 5-8Mbps down [which is admittedly enough for anyone]. Latency might be an issue with VOIP apps - but is alright for email, etc.+
Know Roaming don't seem ready for prime-time yet. This isn't a solution for anyone unless they have good troubleshooting skills and patience; not at all plug and play. 😞
Summary:
For future trips I'll likely just stick with Public Mobile U.S. Roaming, it's a fair price and it worked seamlessly.
(although for those that are cost sensitive and not concerned about using a different number - Roam Mobility worked well too.)
PHT
