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US Roaming Add ons : Decommissioning of US 3G (HSPA) Networks

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

US Roaming Add ons: July 2022

 

Edit: January 10th 2023 

Please see updated info on US Roaming and new links later in this thread to complement this post.

 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/US-Roaming-Add-ons-Decommissioning-of-US-...

 

Edit:

As reported by many pm customers using pm's US Roaming add ons for the last few months AT&T appears to no longer be a roaming partner with pm. Please only try connecting to T-Mobile. However if you do successfully connect to AT&T please report your findings and location to this thread. Thx! (12/28/22)

 

Public Mobile's roaming partner's AT&T and T-Mobile began the decommissioning of their 3G (HSPA) networks this year (2022) with AT&T starting on February 22nd and T-Mobile on July 1st 2022. This affects the voice services in the US when Public Mobile customers purchase and use 10 Day US Roaming Add ons. Public Mobile posted the following notice on the add ons page at publicmobile.ca/plans earlier this year once AT&T began decommissioning their 3G network.

 

Important: As of February 22nd, 2022, some United States (U.S) carriers will begin turning down certain 3G/HSPA networks in the U.S. As a result, some customers using U.S. roaming add-ons may be impacted by differences in coverage or service quality (including 9-1-1 calls) when roaming in the U.S. This shutdown will not impact your service in Canada.

 

But how does this impact your services when roaming in the US? Public Mobile customers will still connect automatically (with the autoconnect setting in your phone) to AT&T's and T-Mobile's 4G LTE networks to send/recieve SMS/MMS texts and use mobile data (depending on the 10 Day US Roaming add on purchased). However US Roaming talk add ons and/or talk components of US Roaming bundles will be impacted. Until VoLTE is enabled for Public Mobile customers the ability to use their voice services will be dependent on the remaining network connectivity with its roaming partners.

 

AT&T is virtually unusable at this point for voice services with their 3G network decommissioning nearly complete. Going forward US Roaming Talk add ons can only be used by manually choosing T- Mobile. In areas where the 3G network has not been decommissioned customers will still connect to the 3G network for voice services. In areas that no longer have access to the 3G network customers may be able to connect to T-Mobile's 2G (GSM) network. In the coming months connectivity to T-Mobile's 3G network will also disappear until only access to their 2G network will be available.

 

2G networks have been maintained by some mobile network providers as it was the fallback option for voice services before VOLTE was developed for the 4G LTE network and still plays an important role for certain technologies and provides better signal coverage over long distances and building penetration.

 

T-Mobile has not confirmed a date for the decommissioning of their 2G network. Updates will be posted on their website. Your phone will automatically switch to 2G to send or recieve a voice call. You will be unable to text or use mobile data during a voice call.

 

This map shows T-Mobile's 2G network coverage.....

Screenshot_20220712-020939~2.png

**Localized 2G network coverage can be found by using the link at the bottom of this post.

 

The best workaround for these issues would be to download a voip provider like textnow that offers free calling and texting on WiFi and mobile data. Purchase a 10 day US Roaming data add on. You can receive incoming pm SMS texts. You can send and receive MMS texts. You can send SMS texts on text now along with send and receive voice calls. MMS texting works but does count against your roaming data. Calls and outgoing SMS on textnow will only use your mobile data while away from WiFi. A US Roaming data add on will provide you with all of your services on your phone albeit in a slightly round about way.

 

For basic info on 10 Day US Roaming Add ons and how they work read the spoiler below....

 

Spoiler
  1. While you have to have an active plan to purchase and use US roaming add ons the type of plan you have does not affect the roaming add ons features.
  2. US roaming add ons start the moment you confirm and submit your purchase in your self serve account and expire 240 hours later (10 days×24 hours).
  3. You can pre-load the funds needed to purchase the add ons in your self serve account so you only have to log in, select the US roaming add on and then confirm and submit your purchase.
  4. Wait til late as possible to purchase since they are immediately valid so on free wifi at the destination airport or stopping shortly before the border at mcd's or timmy's to buy the add on while on free wifi.
  5. If you are staying longer than 10 days you must wait a minimum of 24 hours to purchase the same US roaming add on or contact the moderators to add it before the waiting period ends.
  6. If you have two US roaming add ons with a talk feature that overlap the talk feature basically gets disabled. This is the issue if you hear 3 beeps and your call disconnects after 1 minute and 53 seconds. Avoid this....but you will have to get one removed by a CSA to get your calling feature back if this happens.
  7. After purchase reboot your phone and manually select either at&t or T-mobile to get better reception. Some areas have better coverage by either provider so when travelling around the US you will be better served by choosing the provider with better signal strength by locale.
  8. You will recieve incoming texts without any US roaming add ons. 
  9. All US roaming add ons have either unlimted text, talk or both. Only data has limits depending on your purchase 250mb/500mb/1gb. Once the data is consumed it will just stop you could then purchase different roaming add on, wait 24 hr to buy or contact customer support to buy the same US roaming add on again. (* except talk as previously mentioned.)

    After purchasing a US Roaming add on and once stateside ensure you enable roaming on your phone, reboot and manually choose either AT&T or T-Mobile as your network provider.

Edit:

Removed info related to the old self serve account layout. And added new link to the 611/IVR map.

 

To visually navigate the 611/IVR system (or 1 855 4PUBLIC and enter your 10 digit phone #) rather than follow the prompts use this map/diagram here .

You will need to enter your 4 digit account pin # for all access beyond basic account info and loading payment vouchers (press 1 and 1 again to load vouchers).

 

Please note:

Public mobile has limited roaming coverage thru its partner AT&T in Alaska. T-Mobile does not work for roaming in Alaska. Better service may be best obtained from Alaskan mobile provider GCI depending on the purpose of your travel.

 

To see 2G network coverage for specific areas use the link below...

 

**https://www.gsma.com/coverage/#466

 

 

To contact customer support : Submit a support ticket via SIMon the chat bot Click here 

Or if you cannot submit a ticket via SIMon then Click here   ....for additional member supplied info.

62 REPLIES 62

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

So at 12:02am eastern last night I got the text saying that roaming was going to expire tomorrow. It's really actually for the same day. So today at the exact 240 hours, services stopped. But dang it all that the system decided to take this time to be unavailable. I wanted to watch it all change. Stupid stupid Public Mobile. It just figures.

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

I'll put this here for the roaming relevance. The one account with roaming got the text. I clicked the supplied YES2 button. I got the confirmation response. Checked the account and they were there. That fast.

Can anybody confirm the exact wording of the new add-ons? If the wording is the same as the last year then why wouldn't it have been added to that add-on? (so maybe I'm not really entirely sure I got them)

Still nothing on the other two accounts but they're not roaming so not relevant here.

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

So a useful discovery I stumbled across today. I went in to have a look at the roaming add-on progress this morning. It said 4 days left. It occurred to me to check after the time of day I bought the add-on (since I had kept track of that). So I logged in again shortly after that and now it said 3 days left. So that countdown is directly tied to the 240 hours.

@softech- No. The other US service I got made the option available on the phone and turned it on. I would entirely predict that that option will disappear when I return.

@dust2dust   you said "turned on the volte option on the phone"

 

you meant VoLTE worked for roaming?

 

btw, thanks for testing for us all!!

 

 

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@dust2dust 

Great info! Thanks for testing. So it seems that the extensive 2G coverage on the Hawaiian islands will work well for voice calls when roaming there. I wonder if the 2G network has been well maintained there due to its military importance and remote location compared to the continental US?

 

Enjoy the weather🌞🌴I️'m a out to go shovel about 6 inches of snow that's fallen in the last 6 hours or so....before it becomes a frozen mess....☃️🌨

 

Edit:

I barely got half of the sidewalk done before giving up....very, very heavy wet snow. After 3 hours both the hips and the wrists were done.️

dust2dust
Mayor / Maire

This is current as of this writing.

 

TL;DR: 2 phones. One got the 3-part roaming add-on. One nothing. The roaming works fine. The other gets texts.

 

Main line: left sim in a phone at home, call forwarded to my TextNow. Works and connects calling it from the US. Used a text forwarding app forwarding to my TextNow. Works and forwards texts to it from the US.

 

Other line: no roaming, left automatic networks on, call forwarded to my TextNow before leaving Canada.

Arrived and it connected to T-Mobile and got welcome text. Receiving texts works fine. Calling the number does not go to TextNow. It goes to the voicemail system. The call forwarding options in the dialer still show the TextNow number. The APN settings do not change (except maybe it added IPv6 but not sure. Maybe that will revert upon return.) Scanning networks had the same result as hairbag1. AT&T and Verizon show up but trying to connect to them does not work. It produces an error something like it can't connect. Public should remove all references to AT&T. Regulars should not suggest trying AT&T. Whatever agent said Verizon would work is wrong. Also agreeing with hairbag1. Sending an MMS from TextNow to this line came up with the notification of the receipt of the MMS but it would not download. (obviously)

 

Roaming phone: Purchased roaming a few days before leaving. It all shows as it should in the account.

Turned off automatic networks. Arrived and manually connected to T-Mobile. Got welcome text. Calling and texting in and out worked fine. No reboot necessary. Data works. The sim card status screen shows GSM and GPRS when a call is active. The plan happens to be out of 100 minutes (but with many other valid minutes on the account). Calling works fine (not that the plan minutes should affect the unlimited roaming so just sayin'). There's a possibility that the phone may be losing connection at times. I will do further testing to see if giving it a kick of a test outgoing something makes it work. For some unknown reason I can't call it from TextNow. But it receives other calls. So I cant test forwarding to a US number that I got on the other phone. (Red Pocket Mobile from ebay, one year prepaid averaging $2.50US per 30 days and, by the way, turned on the volte option on the phone)
I will report back with experiences around buying a different add-on after 240 hours.

 

Initial connections were made in the plane after airplane mode was turned off at the airport in the mid-north coast of Maui. Initial calls in and out were made here. Further testing and fiddling was on the north-west coast of Maui. 

Yeah I'm not sure if it was a limitation of my Pixel 5a, but I was not able to find any 2G towers. And with no 3G either = no phone calls.

 

As for TextNow my poor experience was over an excellent private wifi connection. It was worse than Fongo, and that says a lot. 

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@DennyCrane

Thanks for the update.....I'm assuming the lack of calling was due to not veing able to connect to the 2G network with your pixel 5? There was likely T-Mobile's 2G network available but 2G not accessible on your phone for some reason? (5G maybe?) I haven't used textnow on mobile data only wifi and found no calling issues so far? Great info to keep in mind.

@MaraDeb 

No employees here. Who do you think is an employee?

DennyCrane
Mayor / Maire

I posted on another thread but thought I'd update here too. As of November 2022 i was no longer able to make voice calls in Southern California. Thankfully PM refunded us for that portion of our roaming add-on's, but it was a pretty big inconvenience not having our phones. I did try TextNow which seemed fine at first, but i quickly realized the quality was terrible for phone calls, even on a 300/10 WiFi connection.

 

I really hope the notation on the website of VoLTE "coming soon" proves to be true. 

That's great. I was there in June and it was still fine then. Hopefully this trip will be the same. 

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@DennyCrane 

There have been a few customers reporting voice calls worked well in California. Texts will use the 4G LTE network so they won't be an issue at all.

Good to know, thanks. Semi regular. Quick day trips into Washington where i just rely on my Ubigi data. Several longer trips to California per year where I need my phone number for calls and text when I'm on longer trips. 

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@DennyCrane 

The 2G network map should be reliable for T-Mobile. Of course you could always source other network maps that could be more up to date. Are you a regular visitor to the US?

Makes me nervous to rely on it then! It was linked further up as a current map, but I agree this doesn't make sense. Can't be current.

 

Im heading to Southern California next weekend and was hoping to be able to rely on voice and text via PM, data via Ubigi.


@DennyCrane wrote:

Screenshot_20221031-205725.png

The thing I'm not clear on is that if AT&T has pretty much completed their 3G shut down, why is there so much coverage showing on this map still? This is as of now. 


That must be an old map because that network no longer exists.

DennyCrane
Mayor / Maire

Screenshot_20221031-205725.png

The thing I'm not clear on is that if AT&T has pretty much completed their 3G shut down, why is there so much coverage showing on this map still? This is as of now. 

treefrog
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@darlicious 

Great post! The map link is very handy to have. Who knew the 2G network coverage is as extensive as it is? Thanks 

@MaraDeb- They could be in secret of course. But I doubt it.

The company should be providing much more detail to those unsuspecting customers that don't do research beforehand (entirely understandable) to learn the workarounds and methods to use the add-ons. So ya wanna buy roaming add-ons eh...well here's what you need to do to make the best possible use of them. Like right at the moment a roaming add-on is selected into the cart. Of course people still have to read as we know people don't. But at least it would be there.

MaraDeb
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Why do I feel like half the people on this thread are employees of Public Mobile? Or hired by them to gas light customers...

MaraDeb
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Exactly - why offer the service if it likely will not work? I would have purchased a T-Mobile SIM card as I have for longer trips had I known.

And I don't think it should be up to the customer to have to do a bunch of research to find out if an offered product will work.

DennyCrane
Mayor / Maire

This is great. Looks like the area i frequent still has a huge blanket of both 3G and 2G coverage. I use Ubigi for data, but nice to know I can still text and make phone calls with my PM phone number. 

jib_tech
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@darlicious 

Great info! This will come in handy for my next trip South.

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@Kristowhy 

US Roaming Data add ons are full speed 4G LTE as offered by their roaming partners. Public Mobile cannot throttle the data speed of another provider regardless of roaming agreements unless the partner chooses to throttle their data speeds. US providers can and do prioritize network access with resellers(MVNO's) but nowadays that would mostly occur with 5G network access over 4G LTE.

hTideGnow
Mayor / Maire

Hi @darlicious   great info .  

 

thanks.

Kristowhy
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@darlicious wrote:

@Kristowhy 

Public Mobile is the best of the bunch when it comes to prepaid provider US Roaming options in Canada. Fizz has a better price on data at $10/1gb but only offers US Roaming data. Chatr has expensive pay per use options even more if you only have a talk+text plan. Lucky has no US Roaming options. Zoomer and Cityphone have pricey pay per use rates as well.

 

Post paid providers average $12/day capped between $180 and $240/month. Freedom is a reasonable $7/day and Videotron's $10/day capped at $100/month is a bargain in comparison. Top Tier has the option of Canada/US plans w/50gb priced between $105 and $115/month.

 

Public Mobile is the only provider with both AT&T and T-Mobile as roaming partners. Every other Canadian provider has a roaming agreement with AT&T only.


This is an excellent summary of the sad state of telecom in Canada from the big 3 telco mafia.   Sure, PM may be the "best" with multiple roaming partners but presently you cannot use them properly without crazy workarounds.

 

At the end of the day, you either pony up for tier 1 plans, juggle anemic and complicating prepaid options that may or may not work, or get a local US SIM or travel SIM. 

 

Is PM US roaming data guaranteed to work on LTE south of the board, and if so, is it restricted to 3Mbps like it is here in Canada?

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

@Kristowhy 

Public Mobile is the best of the bunch when it comes to prepaid provider US Roaming options in Canada. Fizz has a better price on data at $10/1gb but only offers US Roaming data. Chatr has expensive pay per use options even more if you only have a talk+text plan. Lucky has no US Roaming options. Zoomer and Cityphone have pricey pay per use rates as well.

 

Post paid providers average $12/day capped between $180 and $240/month. Freedom is a reasonable $7/day and Videotron's $10/day capped at $100/month is a bargain in comparison. Top Tier has the option of Canada/US plans w/50gb priced between $105 and $115/month.

 

Public Mobile is the only provider with both AT&T and T-Mobile as roaming partners. Every other Canadian provider has a roaming agreement with AT&T only.

Kristowhy
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Great write up @darlicious!  

 

Why is PM still selling US roaming capabilities when such a long list of workarounds are required?   The reality is that until PM gets their VoLTE act together, roaming south of the border is a risky and frustration prone experience.  And this applies to Koodo prepaid as well.  Obtaining a travel or local SIM is definitely the least painful avenue for now...IMHO. 

 

Personally, I will not use US roaming with PM or Koodo until this is resolved.  In the past, I successfully used (without any issues) Koodo voice, text and data while in the US.   It's now time for Telus to make good again! 😊🙂  It's clear to me that US roaming was/is a low priority for Telus as the US decommissioning has been known about for quite some time.   

 

Meanwhile, other providers such as Primus (which appear to use Rogers) decided to completely remove US roaming all together as of July 1.  See below:

 

https://wireless.primus.ca/addons#addons-tab-travel

 

Primus removes US roaming capabilitiesPrimus removes US roaming capabilities

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yummy
Mayor / Maire

Amazing info. IF only those complaining here for lack of service in US would read it, the rest of us could help others more efficient instead of providing same answers over and over again.

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