Anybody use Roam Mobility? Looking for reviews...

[Skjhjb]

DH and I are both with Koodo. We will be in the US for 12 days. With just me using my "roam like home" feature, it will be $8/day, so $96 total.

If I got the SIM cards from Roam Mobility, it would be $5/day each, and only $120 for both of us to have a card in our phones....

Are they safe to use? I've never taken out my SIM card before (iPhone for me, Samsung for DH)....and with driving the California coast, we will need a phone for GPS for sure.

Just wondering about people's experience with them.

Thanks!

 

[AngelDisney]

All our iPhones are unlocked and I have kept an old iPhone 7 for using SIM card on trips. Used Roam Mobility once and it worked well. I am not sure if you need 1 for each phone. I just tethered data to DD’s phone using personal hotspot. Unless we have to split up on a trip (sometimes DD goes meet with her friends in the area), we share one SIM card. Can personal hotspot be shared among users of different phone types?

I used a prepaid SIM card in Hong Kong once with my existing phone. That SIM card came with calls, texts and data with a local phone number. It’s a bit troublesome to use as my texts sent out using the local number. So I needed to let others know that it’s me using a new phone number. Other than that, travel SIM cards are pretty easy to use. You just have to switch the SIM card and follow setting instructions to set up the phone with the new SIM card.

 

[starvenger]

Currently using Roam on the California Coast on a 10-day trip. Works quite well, but there is a dead zone around Big Sur while you're in the forest.

I got the monthly plan which is $40 but only 1GB. There's a promotion going on that gives you 2GB, but it started almost exactly when I started my vacation. Le sigh.

Anyway, there has been enough hotspots that I can latch onto wifi when I'm not driving and such. I'm heading from Santa Cruz to LA today via I5. I expect no issues, but will let you know if there is.

Important to note: I assume your phones are unlocked. If they aren't, ensure that they are before you purchase this. If you don't want to do that, look into getting a portable wifi hub. More expensive (somewhere around $150-$200 for the device + extra for the plan) but it will connect you to whatever LTE/3G network it can latch onto and you just connect to the hub. Drawback is that it will still likely hit some dead spots and the hub doesn't broadcast in that wide a radius.

 

[ottawamom]

I use ROAM each time we travel to the US. I am technically challenged person and taking my SIM out and switching it over was easy. I keep my "home" SIM in the packaging that came with the ROAM SIM in a ziplock to hold it all together. Haven't lost it yet.

ROAM uses the T-Mobile network so you can check coverage for your travels before you commit. I thought about using the US options with Koodo prepaid but they were getting mixed reviews so I haven't tried that yet.

 

[starvenger]

All our iPhones are unlocked and I have kept an old iPhone 7 for using SIM card on trips. Used Roam Mobility once and it worked well. I am not sure if you need 1 for each phone. I just tethered data to DD’s phone using personal hotspot. Unless we have to split up on a trip (sometimes DD goes meet with her friends in the area), we share one SIM card. Can personal hotspot be shared among users of different phone types?

Wifi hotspot can be shared with whomever has the ID and code. My wife uses hers to connect her laptop while on the GO train at home, so the Samsung wouldn't be much of a problem.

 

[mort1331]

I use ROAM each time we travel to the US. I am technically challenged person and taking my SIM out and switching it over was easy. I keep my "home" SIM in the packaging that came with the ROAM SIM in a ziplock to hold it all together. Haven't lost it yet.

ROAM uses the T-Mobile network so you can check coverage for your travels before you commit. I thought about using the US options with Koodo prepaid but they were getting mixed reviews so I haven't tried that yet.

This is what we have done. On both coasts. I get just the phone and text and the wife gets the data phone text. so for 12 days you would get 6gigs upfront. lots for us. No issues. But as others have said make sure phones are unlocked, providers in Can have to give you a code for free. We are with Koodo and no issues.

 

[FigmentSpark]

Will you all use the Roam like Home on your Koodo plan every day? We didn't. We turned most things off and used wifi.

 

[Skjhjb]

Will you all use the Roam like Home on your Koodo plan every day? We didn't. We turned most things off and used wifi.

Likely yes - we are only in DL for 3 days, the rest of the time we are driving up the coast. We are leaving our son (18) home alone, and DH's parents are not in great health, so we'd need phones on every day.

 

[bankr63]

A couple of the finer points to keep in mind.

ROAM will give you a US based phone number. If your objective is to stay in touch, you will need to give out your new number to your home contacts. If you are expecting a lot of calls from home, then they will be picking up the long distance charges. You can call-forward your Koodo phone to ROAM just prior to swapping SIM cards which will take care of phone calls, but any texts to your current number will not deliver.

Coverage may be better with Koodo, depending on the carriers they partner with. When I used ROAM it appeared to be only active in the T-Mobile network, no roaming on different carriers; in the northeast I found plenty of zones with no coverage. With Rogers RLH, I find myself connecting to multiple carriers (ATT primarily in the northeast, but a couple of others too) so you may have better coverage with your RLH program as it can switch to other carriers.

We usually only turn on one device for RLH when travelling and then hotspot the other devices to that one. If we are separating, we can turn on the other phone to communicate and only pay for that extra day.

 

[FigmentSpark]

I would say pick one point person and use your Koodo Roam. That's what I did. My kids just texted when there was wifi, like in the hotels or other hotspots. They downloaded any content they wanted to watch while driving, before we left home.

 

[deedubb]

I just used it for our Disneyland trip. Easy to use and had no problems with it. The only issue is giving out the new number to anyone you think might need to contact you while away, along with the fact that they will be paying long distance to call you. You also need to use it at least once a year to keep the # active, otherwise, you will need to buy a new sim card every time.

 

[starvenger]

Or use something like whatsapp to keep in touch

 

[DavidL]

We drove from Ontario down to Florida this month. In previous trips I had used the Roam Mobility SIM in a Blackberry Q10 phone with OK results, but not great. Based on the suggestions of some of the other members here, I tried a different phone. We had much better results using a Samsung S6 phone in comparison to the Blackberry Q10. Areas that were dead spots in Florida on the Blackberry were just fine with the Samsung S6. I don't pretend to know why, but I suspect that the Q10 wasn't able to handle the frequencies or transmission protocols required to access the wider network.

We're very pleased with the Roam Mobility service.

We are low users of data and purchase the monthly $39.99 (Canadian dollars) package that includes 1 Gig of data at high speed, and unlimited slower speed data afterwards. After 12 days in Florida, we'd only used less than 600 MB. There are larger data packages available, but we easily got by with the 1 gig plan.

We made use of the hot-spot capabilities of the Samsung phone and used it for the other phones and tablets to access the internet as required during our trip.

 

[Disney_Alli]

We've used both Roam and Telaway several times around Disneyland (and only to drive to Universal) but had absolutely no problems. They (Roam) were also amazing when my husband had a family emergency and needed to bump up to a better plan. According to the website you can only buy the better plan and you eat the cost of the old one but I sent them a brief email explaining the situation and they instantly agreed to refund the original plan and offered to help in any way they could.

 

[starvenger]

OK so quick update. Drove Santa Cruz-Gilroy-Metro LA via I5 (mostly) and reception was great, as one might expect on an interstate.

I'm staying at an airbnb in Sierra Madre (in the hills, near Pasadena) and sometimes the phone loses reception, but the house has wifi so turning on wifi calling helps with that.

 

[Chickinvic]

They are safe, but I found the service pretty crappy (lots of dead zones) when I used it in Anaheim and Florida. I don't bother anymore and just do roam like home now.