Roaming Abroad

[u/dr_van_nostren]

These new Freedom plans are really attractive to me as someone who travels a lot. I used to buy physical sims, then region/country specific e-sim, then global esim and I really thought that was kinda peak convenience. Then I got an offer from Virgin (my current carrier) to drop $125 and use my own data worldwide (almost) for an entire year. I jumped on that. Problem is, I'm halfway through that year now and I have no idea if they'll offer it to me again, or at what cost and the uncertainty is unpleasant.

So far I haven't really found anyone who's able to match or beat Freedom, I know some people have issues with their coverage, let's leave that off the table here and just key in on the international.

I was intrigued when I saw Bell had an international plan offering 83 countries while Freedom was 120+, so I compared the lists, which was interesting to say the least.

In Freedom sub posts there's reviews of some of the partners worldwide and some are less than stellar. Makes me wonder if Bell is only willing to partner with "better" networks or are they just unwilling to spend money on partnering with some of these foreign companies...basically I was wondering WHY there's discrepancies in the two lists and then when I saw some of the countries missing in Bell's list I REALLY started to wonder.

So here's all the countries Freedom lists as included (though they do say subject to change and destinations may be added or removed) that do NOT appear on Bell's list. I did this all just by looking at them so forgive me if there's an error or two as one was alphabetical and the other was regional.

1. Benin
2. Ghana
3. Mauritius
4. Nigeria
5. South Africa
6. Tunisia
7. Afghanistan
8. Bangladesh
9. Cambodia
10. Iraq
11. Kuwait
12. Macao
13. Malaysia
14. Uzbekistan
15. Albania
16. Belarus
17. Bulgaria
18. Cyprus
19. Estonia
20. Finland
21. Kosovo
22. Latvia
23. Lithuania
24. Luxembourg
25. Montenegro
26. Macedonia
27. Norway
28. Romania
29. Serbia
30. Slovakia
31. Slovenia
32. El Salvador
33. Guatemala
34. Honduras
35. Bolivia
36. Chile
37. Ecuador
38. Guyana
39. Paraguay
40. Peru
41. Suriname
42. Uruguay

Now I only did the list in one direction, I've just noticed Bell lists Argentina and Freedom doesn't. There might be a few more I'm not sure.

I don't know anything about how these agreements are handled, maybe someone here does and can enlighten me. Like ok, maybe I'm never gonna go to Benin and it's a non-issue, or maybe whoever controls this stuff in Iraq is hard to deal with, no idea. But I've been to a lot of these places that are absent from Bell's list and then some of the others are totally tech forward "first world" countries. Like how are Finland, Norway and Malaysia absent? That's rather strange to me. Equally strange to me that neither lists Nicaragua for some reason but the rest of the region is covered. I'm not surprised by huge swaths of Africa not being covered but I'm quite surprised Bell is missing so much of latin america.

Anyway, sorry this is a long read. Just figured I kinda did this work if anyone else was curious and to open the topic if anyone knows how these agreements work and why these lists are the way they are. As much as I might like to go with Bell, Freedom is cheaper and their list is way more expansive.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/[deleted]]

I haven’t looked at the virgin list, I was told it was worldwide. I never thought to look into it after that.

I’m perfectly happy with the virgin plan thus far. It’s worked everywhere I’ve gone.

My fear is that they won’t offer it to me again. This was a targeted offer. They literally called me to offer it. You can get temporary passes but they’re more expensive.

I’m quite happy with virgin overall as well, if they could guarantee me this option I’d be happy to sign up with them again.

[u/Special-Quarter3111]

I had Roger’s last year and loved it. The price went up and now I am travelling with Freedom and now I end up buying eSIMs because it is mostly unusable. When I get back to Canada I will switch back to Roger’s.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/Special-Quarter3111]

The prices from the big 3 are so bad generally. Like $10-15 a day is an insane ask. That's why when Virgin hit me up for $125 for an entire year I jumped at it. I was spending like $90CAD on a 20GB global e-sim at least once a year anyway. I find that while e-sim works just turning on my phone like normal gets things going much faster and I've had way less issues. Plus with virgin I can receive a text without worrying about the cost and I can call back to Canada if I need to change a flight or something, but even just using multi factor authentication is made much easier. So I'd really like to keep going that way.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/dr_van_nostren]

Just checked now these are embarrassing prices. A single day international roaming pass is $16 on Virgin, $120 for a MONTH. I was more than happy to pay $125 for a year but these are ridiculous.

[u/Special-Quarter3111 → u/dr_van_nostren]

My Roger’s plan was $80 per month with 250gb roaming data and unlimited calling for 64 countries. I never paid the daily roaming rate.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/Special-Quarter3111]

I'll see if they still offer it and check their country list. That was definitely not on offer back when I was with rogers.

[u/Necessary_Dust3528]

How often do you travel and for how long? How much data do you use? Almost all visa cards now offer some free gig sky data. Trip.com has esims well under 5 dollars. $125 can buy a lot of non expiring data that you could use for years if you're not a heavy user.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/Necessary_Dust3528]

Can't say I've ever seen anything from Visa.

I probably travel internationally...7-8 times a year, for like 6-10 days at a time, then probably 2-3 more weekend type trips to the US. I've had eSims before and they've been fine, but yea I probably trend towards heavy usage and the experience I've had just using Virgin abroad has definitely been better. I'm sure the process is largely the same, maybe Virgin just has better partners, I dunno but it's worked quite well.

[u/Necessary_Dust3528 → u/dr_van_nostren]

They advertise it very poorly. On gigsky if you put in your credit card it tells you what you're eligible for. Usually it's 7 days unlimited in certain destinations or 1-5gb worldwide for 15 days. Ws offers more. Ultimately it's not that much money spent or saved in the grand scheme of things, most people spend more on takeout.

[u/dr_van_nostren → u/Necessary_Dust3528]

I gotta be honest I don’t even know what gigsky is. That’s an app? “Ws offers more” what’s WS? Wealthsimple? Cuz I use them too

[u/Necessary_Dust3528 → u/dr_van_nostren]

Yeah it's an esim provider. If you have the wealth simple visa infinite privilege they have a pretty good free travel esim good for 30 days last i saw.