[arch-events] Archcon: Canadian prepay simcards

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Sun, 4 Jul 2010 07:59:49 -0600
Dusty Phillips <dusty at archlinux.ca> wrote:

> Hi Dieter,
> 
> I actually have a telus sim card laying around that you can have. The
> rates in Canada are outrageous:
> 
> http://www.telusmobility.com/en/AB/prepaid/rates.shtml
> 
> Probably the cheapest company is wind mobile:
> 
> http://www.windmobile.ca/
> 
> They're new and are undercutting everyone right now. They're probably
> the only company with an acceptable prepaid data rate; most of them
> are like $30/megabyte (but they advertise as 3 cents per kilobyte).
> 
> The other major companies are:
> 
> http://bell.ca/
> http://rogers.ca/
> http://koodomobile.com/
> http://fido.ca/  (I use them, personally)
> http://speakout7eleven.ca/
> 
> For all of them, you have to find out if your phone operates at the
> same frequency as the network in question, which can be tricky. I
> believe wind mobile operates on a different frequency from all the
> rest, because they just bought the band about a year ago.
> 
> Most of the above companies sell sim cards in any convenience store or
> supermarket, so it wouldn't be hard to get your hands on one once you
> get here. You can also get a cheap throw-away phone at some of them,
> if your phone doesn't work here.
> 
> Dusty


Hmm. I only find "plans" on the wind mobile site, no simple prepay
cards.
Telus has a prepay cards, but no info about data traffic.

Maybe this makes sense, maybe prepay cards that support data traffic
just don't exist.

But anyway, data traffic is not important if there are enough public
wifi hotspots in downtown toronto & archcon.

My phone (nokia n900) supports many frequencies, actually:
from http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/specifications: 
    * Quad-band GSM EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
    * WCDMA 900/1700/2100 MHz
GPRS class A, multislot class 32, maximum speed 107/64.2 kbps (DL/UL)
EDGE class A, multislot class 32, maximum speed 296/177.6 kbps (DL/UL)
WCDMA 900/1700/2100. Maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (DL/UL) HSPA
900/1700/2100. Maximum speed PS 10/2 Mbps (DL/UL) WLAN IEEE 802.11b/g

I believe it is one of the most "compatible with any network" phones
out there.


Meh, I'll just find a store and ask for a cheap prepay card.

Dieter