• My $12 Text Message

    by
    acurrie
    Published on 01-14-2020 08:00 AM
    4 Comments Comments


    While on my Christmas vacation this year I got a valuable, if expensive, data point about roaming on Telus.

    Last summer when Canada's Big Three carriers reset the BYOD market with their $75 "unlimited" (to 10 GB) plans, there were questions on HoFo about incoming text messages while abroad. The good news is that, for Telus subscribers anyway, incoming texts continue to be free no matter where you and your device happen to find yourselves.

    The girlfriend and I both have dual SIM OnePlus phones, and for the Japan portion of our trip found a local data SIM cheaper than the $12 CAD/day Easy Roam rate on Telus. Which brings us to the bad news: Easy Roam, if enabled on your account, is automatically activated by using your Telus SIM abroad—either data or, in my case, an outgoing SMS.

    Rubbing salt in this small wound was that the person who texted me is also on WhatsApp, so I could have messaged her back for free. Instead I learned a hard lesson, so that you don't have to!

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    Andrew Currie has been blogging about mobile phones since 2001, smartphones (depending on how you define them) since 2002 and smartwatches since 2014.
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    This article was originally published in forum thread: My $12 Text Message started by acurrie View original post
    1. Categories:
    2. Carriers
    Tags: canada, carriers, sms
    Comments 4 Comments
    1. The_Night_Owl's Avatar
      The_Night_Owl - 01-14-2020, 08:11 AM
      Quote Originally Posted by acurrie View Post
      Easy Roam, if enabled on your account, is automatically activated by using your Telus SIM abroad—either data or, in my case, an outgoing SMS.!
      Also an outgoing or incoming phone call will trigger roaming.

      I was able to use a VPN with hotel Wi-Fi (while in Airplane Mode) when I was in Las Vegas back to a Canadian server. TELUS thought at first that I was in Canada and everything was working fine and for free. But on subsequent attempts, using a VPN back to Canada using Wi-Fi didn't work anymore so I just used Easy Roam. I was on vacation with my girlfriend so there wasn't much time to figure out what went wrong.

      Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk
    1. acurrie's Avatar
      acurrie - 01-14-2020, 12:28 PM
      Another good data point, thanks!
    1. Samshares's Avatar
      Samshares - 01-14-2020, 09:14 PM
      Is it possible to remove easy roam once you add it?
    1. The_Night_Owl's Avatar
      The_Night_Owl - 01-14-2020, 09:15 PM
      Quote Originally Posted by Samshares View Post
      Is it possible to remove easy roam once you add it?
      Yes, you can remove Easy Roam any time you want.

      Sent from my SM-G960W using Tapatalk

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