International sim with USA number

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by petkow

Some interesting stats vaguely related to this drift:

Only 27% of US citizens have a passport. Of these a record 320,000 got them in the first 7 days of 2007 due to a new rule that was enforced on Jan 23rd requiring a passport for travel between the US and Canada.

On the flip side I wonder how many Europeans don't have a passport/national ID card?

Well petkow...you certainly do understand the big difference...in Europe you travel 20 or 30 km and you are in a different country and while the Schengen agreement has cut down on some of the paperwork at frontiers, they still sometimes do ask for identity cards or passports. The relative magnitudes of the border areas are completely different....a much smaller percentage of Americans live within 160 km. of the Canadian or Mexican borders then Canadians to the US border...in the United States if you live in say Atlanta, you are nowhere near an international border where a passport would be necessary. Not many Americans spend their summer breaks in Canada whereas many Canadians, many Canadians, think nothing of buying up property in Florida or Arizona and spending their winters there and although they never technically needed passports, after 9/11 American paranoia increased to such a degree that more and more border crossings especially of Canadians into the United States began checking more closely and it was easier to have a passport although as noted it was not required.

[petkow]

Too true Matha 531. It is a big difference.

Originally Posted by MATHA531

many Canadians, think nothing of buying up property in Florida or Arizona and spending their winters there

I think they call them "Snowbirds"!

By the way, (in an effort to vaguely get back onto topic)... what are agreements like between the networks in the US and Canada? I know many of the US networks allow your 'free minutes'/airtime to be used for calling Canada, but I do not know if it is the same vice versa. Do any of these offer any deals on using your airtime for incoming when you are across the border? Maybe there is a 'snowbird special' tarrif!

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Well petkow...you certainly do understand the big difference...in Europe you travel 20 or 30 km and you are in a different country and while the Schengen agreement has cut down on some of the paperwork at frontiers, they still sometimes do ask for identity cards or passports. The relative magnitudes of the border areas are completely different....a much smaller percentage of Americans live within 160 km. of the Canadian or Mexican borders then Canadians to the US border...

Yes, but it's not only about number of people that live near borders, but also about their fancy shapes, as I have already said. Because of this fact, the fastest/cheapest/easiest routes for domestic trips in Europe involve crossing the territory of another country (e.g. Wien-Salzburg-Innsbruck via Germany). Using those transit routes forces travelling people who want to be in touch to use roaming sick rates or to restrict using their mobile phones to receiving SMS only. OTOH, the US has really "uncomplicated" borders. Even though Alaska is "detached" from mainland USA and the province of Ontario is a Canadia "wedge" how many Americans travel via land routes to Alaska or e.g. from Maine to Minnesota via Canada? Even if there were tens of thousands a day, then what they really needed, would be "US-Canadian" SIMs, not "global" ones....

[tivoboy]

Originally Posted by Stu

As an American who just had to have more passport pages glued into his passport I resent the implication that we are all provincial Bafoons. Unfortunately, however, I have met some Americans who have led credence to this story. My wife was working on helping one of her organizations setup up a conference in Canada and some of the e-mails they received were a stitch. My favorite were the ones about whether they needed to only drink bottled water, avoid salads, and soft shelled fruits when dining in Toronto.

I forward a US number to my sim dejour and it works great. The problem comes when someone tries to send an SMS to that number.

less than 15% of the US population have passports. That says something, don't it?

[jeffharris]

Originally Posted by tivoboy

less than 15% of the US population have passports. That says something, don't it?

Actually, I heard that stat, too. But, when I did a little Google research (which I think eliminates the need for higher education!) the actual range is not so exact, and kind of vague -- from about 15% to over 20% in some stats. Anyway, you think that's a low stat, but, when you think of how many billions of people are starving, as opposed to the not-so-many-more billions total people on the earth, THAT is an amazing stat.

PS -- I can't keep a passport for the 10 years. I have my latest 6 years, THREE inserts of extra pages, and, it is about to fall apart.

And salads should be avoided EVERYWHERE ... they suck - admit it, it's just filler!.. Toronto included ..

Back to SIMs .......

[MATHA531]

There are a couple of plans with US carriers that allow you to roam in Canada for something like $4/month....if needed they can be checked out on the web sites of cingular and T Mobile USA. For the most part, people doing what you suggest would probably not be making that many calls and the US carriers do allow roaming in Canada albeit at higher prices (but I don't think outrageously so as I remember)..

But I do have one pet peeve about this...as you may or may not know...the US, Canada and some Caribean countries have all been designated as country code 1...leaving places such as Bermuda aside, you cannot tell by looking at a number whether it is in the USA or in Canada unless you are a walking encyclopedia of area codes so I see something advertised and to call 1 514 555 1212...aha I use my mobile phone to make the call to avoid US long distance charges since the entire USA is considered one dialing area on most 21st century mobile phone plans and aha...other than the accent (I am pretty good at recognizing Canadian accents and this example is not all that good as you will see in a second) but anyway at the end of the month I get a bill with an add on to my thousands of included minutes and free weekends and nights because the call was to Quebec (obviously I would have recognized the Quebec accent or the fact that under Quebec law the call has to be answered at first in French but by then it is too late)...all this is covered under something called the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) that once upon a time was administered by the Bell system but has long since passed into other hands....you don't know from outside North America when dialing the USA or Canada as both start with+1...I wonder how Canadians feel about this...once again big brother in the USA treats them as 2nd class citizens...if I were Canadian I would start a crusade to get my own country code...it would certainly make life easier for citizens of both countries (and perhaps the rest of the world although to the best of my knowledge calling rates to the USA and to Canada are almost identical everywhere).

[petkow]

This has caught me off guard in the past too! Let alone the US/Canada thing some telcos around the world even impose different rates to Alaska and Hawaii as well. I suppose every country with offshore territory has some of this though! In the UK we have the channel islands and the IOM which to a novice, look just like ordinary numbers, but then again you can get charged higher rates.

Point taken though... at least Canada and the US should be different country codes, after all what other separate countries (however small they are) share a country code? (Well OK the vatican has it's own +379 but I think it uses Italy's +39 in reality)

[PhotoJim]

Originally Posted by petkow

Point taken though... at least Canada and the US should be different country codes, after all what other separate countries (however small they are) share a country code? (Well OK the vatican has it's own +379 but I think it uses Italy's +39 in reality)

It wouldn't help things that much to give Canada a separate country code. I guess it would let you distinguish Canadian numbers, but the real reason to give us our own code is to free up area codes, since you are running out. However, we don't use that many area codes, maybe 20.

A better tack might be to add a digit to the area code and make all Canadian area codes start with the same number, e.g. 2... so area code 2416 would be Toronto, area code 2403 would be southern Alberta, area code 2204 would be Manitoba, area code 2450 would be suburban Montreal, etc. Existing US area codes might start with 3, e.g. 3212 for Manhattan in New York City. I suppose you could pedantically argue that that would make Canada in country code 12 and the US in country code 13, except that Americans would use domestic dialling sequences to reach Canada (e.g. 1-2403-555-1212) and not overseas sequences (e.g. 011-2403-555-1212).

I guess the better question is why American cellular companies charge for long distance to Canada? Some VoIP telephony providers, like Yahoo, charge less to call Canada than to call the US. Most providers charge precisely the same rate for both countries.

By the way, Quebecers aren't required to answer the phone in French. They can answer in Punjabi if they want. Many Quebecers, especially in Montréal, are anglophones.

[MATHA531]

Photojim...

Although the issue is not as strong as once it was, I do remember there were language laws passed in Quebec about 20 years ago requiring among other things that signs could be in both English and French but the French had to be larger, that businesses were required to greet customers in French but could then switch to English etc. I assumed this was true of answering the phone. Have these laws been repealed?

Incidentally, as a side note and of no particular importance, I noticed that stop signs in France and Germany now say STOP and not ARRET or HALT...I wonder if this affects the stop signs in Quebec?

[PhotoJim]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Although the issue is not as strong as once it was, I do remember there were language laws passed in Quebec about 20 years ago requiring among other things that signs could be in both English and French but the French had to be larger, that businesses were required to greet customers in French but could then switch to English etc. I assumed this was true of answering the phone. Have these laws been repealed?

Not repealed, but watered down. When the laws were initially passed, they had to be French only, in fact. The way you describe them is how the law reads today.

There has never been a requirement to answer the phone in French, though. Any company or organization that deals with francophone Quebecers will assuredly answer in French or bilingually, but there is no requirement for thus. If you don't care about alienating the French-speaking community, you can answer only in English if you wish. Bilingual or francophone answering is done for business reasons, not for legal ones.

"Stop" isn't entirely un-French - "stopper" is a casual word for "to stop" - but Quebec tends more strongly to use French words instead of francophied English ones. France has "le volleyball" and Quebec has "le ballon-panier", but strangely it's "le football" and "le baseball" in both.