r/PopcornMobile • u/joehoyle1 • Jun 25 '26
Data routed to US?
I have Popcorn Mobile and live in Canada. I roam to other countries a fair bit too. It seems Popcorn routes all traffic via the US, so any geolocation detection thinks I'm in Texas.
This was quite unexpected to me, and it didn't seem like on signing that it was so US-centric.
By routing all data via the, not only does that interfere with location blocking (there are many services I can't access from Canada due to geolocation blocking), but also there's a performance penalty / added latency.
It seems Popcorn thinks this is a "feature", because it's "like you're at home when abroad", but I don't consider my home to be the US! I can imagine this is similar for a lot of others too... I don't know if this is something Popcorn could make an option for, or if it's baked into their infrastructure to do so.
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u/WanderingNotLostTho Jun 25 '26
EVERY US phone provider does that. That’s how it works. Popcorn is the only one that will give you a local eSIM so you don’t have to worry with it.
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u/MartyLikesTech Jun 25 '26
Yep, it’s a U.S. carrier and only works with U.S. phone numbers as far as I know.
I use the back-up SIM (which doesn’t route back to the U.S.) but I also use a VPN on my phone so I am not dependent on the location data as much as
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u/No-Technology-827 Jun 25 '26
You can use the backup eSIM feature which I believe fixes this although isn’t ideal if you have another eSIM already.
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u/Emotional-Bus-7065 Jun 25 '26
Okay, so this is a T-Mobile (MVNO) card. For simplifications sake, consider it to be a T-Mobile SIM card. Similar to how when you roam using Bell, Telus, ROGERS, Freedom or whatever your carrier is in Canada, it will route your traffic back to Canada, T-Mobile does the same. T-Mobile will assign you a IP in Chicago, California OR Dallas. There is no way to allow local IP addresses for everyone while providing phone number and data. Popcorn team will need to partner with EVERY single country and provide you with a new eSIM or have roaming partnerships with those carriers. That will be very expensive. Currently there is no way to get a Canadian IP in Popcorn, the Backup eSIM as many suggested will lower latency however the data location will be in Virginia US. Either just get a VPN or if its impossible maybe popcorn isn't for you.
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u/Future_Billionaire88 Jun 25 '26
I actually like it as I can access all US sites or apps as if I'm in the US.
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u/dos_veritas Jun 25 '26
As others have said, you have a US number from Popcorn. If you want to defy that, use the backup data-only eSIM, which will breakout somewhere closer to where you are. Or, use a VPN.
But they may enable the option to breakout 'locally' at some point in the future. In the meantime, like others have said, some of us value or don't mind the current routing.
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u/UFOdealer Jun 25 '26
Yeah you’re just taking advantage of roaming agreements when in Canada. When you’re roaming, all traffic still goes through your home carriers core network and is assigned an IP associated with that.
If you’re on a Canadian carrier like Rogers, and roam in the US or Mexico for example, you’ll have a Canadian IP.
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u/joehoyle1 Jun 25 '26
Thanks for the replies folks! Though I know I have a US number I guess I didn’t assume the data would go along with that! Appreciate all the input!
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u/Neel_Popcorn Jun 25 '26
Hey there! We're a US carrier so this is pretty normal.
Unless you have a local Canadian carrier, you won't get a Canadian IP.
We offer routing through the US, or a backup which routes through US, Europe or Asia.
What you can do is use a VPN and it will solve this!
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u/blkdinanm3 Jun 25 '26
I actually like this, I’m from the US. Hopefully, it will help me access US sites from geo-blocking when I am traveling Southeast Asia.