t-mobile recently announced plans that work in Canada and Mexico without additional cost. Considering the high cost of data with Rogers, I thought I’d give t-mobile a spin while we’re still in Canada. We purchased a ZTE MF915 and a 7GB plan and now have it on in Surrey/White Rock area. t-mobile has plans up to 13gb for the data, though the stores don’t know anything above 7gb exists. At first we were only seeing 3G speeds, but I just moved the hub and boom….4G LTE (off of Telus). Then boom…no signal. Granted, we’re in an odd location, even with a signal booster I usually on get 40% signal strength from Rogers. I’m hoping that t-mobile will actually have better coverage in Canada due to whatever partner arrangements they have so it can supplement our data while here. We’ll have to play a bit more and see what we can get out of this. I may have play with a yaggi antenna for the booster.
Update (Sep 27)
Well, two weeks in and several contacts with T-Mobile support, we’re still without roaming in Canada. The support staff has been very friendly and quick to respond, but nothing has been fixed yet. In our particular location, we’re also only getting a 3G connection. The T-Mobile hotspot fails to connect to Rogers LTE/4G even though we’re able to with our Rogers account.
Update (Sep 29)
Finally got real help from @TMobileHelp on twitter. We’re on a pre-paid account, which is supposed to work, but doesn’t right now. They gave us a credit for the 7GB we paid for, and gave us a free 1GB/7 day data pack that does indeed work in Canada. They also told me the post-paid accounts have not had problems. I’m guessing this will clear up eventually, in the meantime we’ll probably move to a post-paid account so we can have a little extra data for the next couple months we’re in Canada.
TMobile roams on Bell, Telus and Rogers. I couldn’t connect to Bell, but verified both Telus and Rogers. Got “great” speeds off of Telus, sustained 26mb/s download, haven’t got anywhere near that with our Rogers account.