vB Easy Archive - American in Canada

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American in Canada
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Posted by: chuckaroo

I'm a US citizen with a cheap virgin mobile canada phone, which I've used in the past for canada trips.

I also recently started service here in the USA (TMobile) with an unlocked GSM Treo 680.

On my next Toronto trip, should I

1. use the Treo and pay international rates?

2. use the Virgin Canada phone and get socked on incoming calls from the states (and checking voicemail), and not have all the cool Treo functions?

or

3. Bring the Treo plus both SIMS

Posted by: PhotoJim

Get an account from grandcentral.com. Forward your US phone to it. Have grandcentral.com forward your calls to your Virgin number and use it.

If you really want to use your Treo, get a Canadian GSM prepaid account.

I use a CDMA and a GSM provider in the US (PagePlus and T-Mobile respectively). I use whichever is more appropriate for my situation.

If you want to get a Canadian GSM SIM, Rogers allows you to pay $100 for one year of validity. That will probably be ideal for your application. However, if you can live with using the Virgin phone, you can do the same on it and not have to keep two accounts running.

Posted by: chuckaroo

Thanks very much PhotoJim. I really like the grandcentral idea. Didn't realize they forwarded internationally.

But why not put the Canadian Virgin Mobile SIM in my Treo? I'm guessing that simply doesn't work, or you'd have recommended it.....

Posted by: PhotoJim

Virgin Mobile uses CDMA, that's why. There is no SIM to move.

Virgin is my secondary Canadian provider for that very reason. There is only one GSM network in Canada (Rogers/Fido) so having a prepaid account on GSM wouldn't add any coverage for me at all.

GrandCentral doesn't forward internationally per se but it does permit calls to Canada (we use the same country code). I have a Los Angeles GrandCentral number myself.

You can even have it ring to your US and Canadian numbers simultaneously and have callers dial it directly, so then it wouldn't matter what cell phone you used - you'd get your calls.

Posted by: chuckaroo

Thanks for the great info!

Posted by: PhotoJim

You're welcome. Hope to see you in Saskatchewan one day

Posted by: DRNewcomb

I don't know about grandcentral but voicestick.com will forward just about anywhere in the world.