Tech Travel Tips for Canadians: Roaming Data

I constantly see friends struggling with staying connected while travelling either for work or pleasure. I thought I’d share some tips that I’ve used for years to stay connected and save a ton of money while travelling. In this post, I’ll cover roaming data and is specifically meant for Canadians although some of the tips presented here will work for residents from other countries.

Roaming Data
If you’re still just using the roaming package offered by your cellular provider, you’re overspending by a ton. With average roaming fees for a Canadian in the USA typically being between $10-15 a day, it’s easy to spend a ton while on a short trip across the line (if you’re still doing that with the current state of things there). Using EasyRoam (or whatever your provider calls their roaming service) is the most painless way to stay connected but as you’ll see below, you’re really paying through the nose for the convenience.

Most modern cellphones now support eSIMs – gone are the days of having to hunt down a SIM card once you land in a foreign country – if you’re able to! Even then, you may have issues with payment, topping up your plan or simply activating it since some require you to have access to working mobile number for a text code.

While there are many providers of eSIMS now, I’ve been using Airalo.com for a number of years now which has an app that makes it easy to browse plan options, add a plan and install an eSIM from within the app. Plans are very reasonable and can be purchased for a specific country or even continent/region if you’re planning to jump around while abroad.

If you use my referral code, you can save $3 USD off your first purchase. You can also get your own referral code once you’ve set up an account and refer your friends and family for even more savings.

Sample prices for data in USA:

As you can see from the images above, plans start as low as $4.50 USD for 7 days with 1gb of data that works in the US. Make sure you check the entire list of options for your destination as they tend to put the sale items at the bottom of the list.

This tip is strictly for mobile data – Airalo (and many eSIM providers) doesn’t offer voice calling, just data. But you can use any app for calls like WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, FaceTime, etc. You should also be aware that depending on your local carrier, calls or texts to your phone while roaming may trigger their daily roaming package.

You’ll want to specify how your voice/data/texts are handled by your phone and disable roaming for at least your home carrier – this step is very important to avoid getting charged for roaming. This will vary depending on your cellphone and operating system. You can either completely turn off your local plan and just use the Airalo (or other) eSIM for data, or set Airalo as your primary data carrier but leave voice calls on so you can at least see who’s calling you and decide if it’s worth answering or sending it to voicemail to retrieve using a data based service or when you get home. A hassle? Yes, a little. But if you don’t expect to receive a lot of voice calls, the data only method is the cheapest way to go.

If you’re an iPhone user, you may have some strangeness with iMessage depending on how you set it up originally. iMessage works via data only but if you set it up using only your phone number, when you have Airalo activated, you technically have a different number so your friends will get a new message from an unknown contact – so you may want to give them a heads up before you leave. If you used your Apple ID email to set it up, it should behave normally.

There is one caveat that I’ve noticed specifically with Airalo though and it’s not widely talked about which I noticed during my first US based trip. If you’re a user of TikTok, you may have connectivity issues since it appears that Airalo is based in the UAE and there seems to be some kind of block on accessing TikTok, even when you are on wifi.

To access TikTok, I had to turn off the Airalo sim and just go to Airplane mode and wifi. You’ll know TikTok isn’t working because it won’t refresh any content, or your FYP will be a bunch of blank videos.

Maybe this is a feature though depending on how much you want to disconnect during your trip.

In the interest of full disclosure, I recently switched my local carrier’s plan (Public Mobile) to a Canada/USA plan so I don’t pay any roaming fees while in the US. I do use Airalo for any trips to Europe or Asia though.

If you’re a frequent US travelling Canadian, check with your provider to see if they have any compelling plans that will cover you…some even have Mexico included.

Public Mobile is my current go to provider (owned by TELUS) and they have a great referral option. If you want to sign up, you’ll get a one-time $10 bill credit using this link. I’m currently paying $35/month for 75gb of US/Canadian/Mexico data. The referral program also gives you points that you can convert into bill credits, roaming data (if your plan doesn’t have any) or long distance minutes.

It should be noted that Public Mobile doesn’t have a support number you can call….it’s a discount provider for a reason. You have to use their online chat/forum to get support. I used it once to confirm some coverage changes and was expecting a slow response but I had an agent reply within minutes.

They also don’t currently have roaming packages for other countries…like Europe or Asia. So you’ll want to get an e-sim for those places. Another benefit of e-sims is that you can have multiple installed at a time and route your phone calls to one e-sim and data to another.