SpeakOut Canada now offers SIMs and online airtime purchase

[bylo]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

Interesting. No 7-Elevens in Quebec and the East? 25 cent local calls in Canada.

Once you have a SIM there's no longer any need for a 7-11 to add airtime. Now you can get a friend to buy a SIM at any Canadian 7-11 store for $10 then mail it to you.

Also when you get the SIM you can call SpeakOut to ask them to change your phone number to a local exchange so that most of your calls will be local. There's no charge for that.

This seems like a good offer for some short term and intermittent visitors. They say coverage to 94% of Canadians. A lot of empty Canada though.

My wife and I both use it as our primary cell phone. (We're not heavy users so a $25 refill lasts a year.)

As for coverage they're a Rogers MVNO so the phone works in almost all of the populated parts of Canada. (One exception is outside the main cities/towns in Newfoundland where Bell has much better coverage.)

Realize too that something like 90% of Canadians live within 200km of the US border. So while the country is large, the populated/travelled part is relatively small.