Best Cellphone Plans for Travel

By Dave from AirportDirect

A Canadian guide to choosing the best cellphone option for travelling

Choosing the right cellular plan for travelling can be a daunting task. Reliability, coverage, speed, and price are all equally as important when you’re exploring and wandering about in an unfamiliar land.

In this quick guide, I will outline some of the best cellphone plan options for travelling in different countries, with a comparison between Canadian providers’ roaming plans versus the local telecom companies of your destination.

Option 1: Roaming.

Canadian telecom provider charge between $12-14 per day for USA roam, and between $15-$16 per day for other countries as of March 2024, and that’s with most major Canadian telecom brands such as Rogers, Bell, Fido, Koodo, Telus etc. This enables you to use your current Canadian data and cellular plan while travelling abroad as if you were using your phone in Canada. To enable this, simply turn on “Roaming” in your phone’s setting once you arrive to your destination, and you will automatically receive a text confirmation from your Canadian telecom provider. Make sure you check with your current cellphone provider before your trip to confirm the daily rate before you enable roaming, just to be sure. And remember to turn it off when you return to Canada. How it works is your Canadian cellphone carrier contracts out local carriers in your destination country to enable you to use your current plan at a flat rate.

Here’s a picture of how to toggle your roaming on and off for iPhones:

How to turn on roaming for iPhone.

Pros: Convenience and peace of mind. You don’t have to worry about finding a local telecom store to purchase a SIM card and a short-term plan. You can use your data and phone plan as usual, as soon as you land at the airport. Flat rate of around $15 a day also gives you a peace of mind as you know exactly what the costs will be.

Cons: Sometimes Canadian telecom companies contract out the lowest bid carrier in each country, which sometimes may result in poor service, slow data speed, and inadequate coverage. Another con is that the $15 a day rate does add up fast and becomes a big bill very fast. For example, if you are away for 2 weeks, then that’s $15 x 14 days = $210+tax just for roaming! Yikes.

Option 2: Buying a SIM card and a short-term travel plan from a local carrier.

Canada is known for having one of the most expensive cellphone plans in the world, due to our large land mass, lower population, and fewer competitors in telecom. As a result, you will most likely find much cheaper cellphone plans with data in other parts of the world. Most cellphone carriers in Europe, Latin America, and Asia offer short-term and no commitment plans for tourists, with 14 days and 30 days being the most common options.

Be sure to do your research ahead of time before your trip, including:

Googling the most popular cellphone carrier in your destination country. For example, by typing in the query “Mexico telecom companies by market share” you will get a clear picture of who the largest telecom company is in Mexico. Reason is because the largest telecom company usually invests the most in infrastructure, which translates to increasing your odds of getting a better cellular coverage most of the time. As a tourist, it’s important to have a reliable and solid cellphone coverage anywhere you go, in case of emergencies.
After you’ve honed in on a good company, go on their website and take a look at their short-term plans, or special plans for tourists. Some telecom companies don’t offer their websites in English, so your best bet is to copy and paste things into Google Translate. Take a screenshot of the plan you want, so that you can show it to the cellphone store clerk later on. Visual aids help so much, especially when you don’t understand the language of the country you’ll be travelling to.
Next, go on Google Maps and find out where their store is inside the destination airport, or near the hotel you’ll be staying. Take a screenshot of the location and address so you don’t forget.

Pros: Buying a local SIM card with a short-term plan is going to be a much cheaper option compared to using your roaming option. Most cellphone plans abroad (converted to CAD) averages between $10-$30 for 30 days of unlimited calling + anywhere from 10-40GB of data, sometimes unlimited data depending on the country. A SIM card usually costs between $5-$15. If you’re staying for more than a week, then it is definitely worth getting a local SIM card and plan.

Cons: It can be a daunting and inconvenient task to go to a cellphone carrier store after you land in an unfamiliar country. If the airport does not have a carrier store, then you must venture out of the airport to find one, without any access to data and calls in the meantime. This can be a major dealbreaker for some, especially when you need data and cellular service right after you arrive. Although most airports offer free WiFi, it can be difficult to connect to a free WiFi outside of the airport. Some workarounds to this include: downloading offline Google maps, and saving the addresses of the places you need to go, ahead of time before your trip. That way, you’ll still be able to navigate your way outside of the airport without data. You can also book and prepay your airport pickup ahead of time, so you won’t need cellular to contact a taxi or bus shuttle on the spot.

Another inconvenience is swapping SIM cards at your destination country, and also after you return back to Canada. I always carry a small container which I found from Dollarama to store SIM cards and a SIM card needle to pop open the SIM card tray. And when I’m flying back to Canada, I put the SIM card container inside my pocket so that I can easily swap SIM cards a head of time before touchdown.

Here’s a picture of my SIM card container with a SIM card needle packed into it:

SIM card container for travel.

Option 3: A hybrid approach to roaming and a local cellphone plan.

If you want the best of both Option 1 and 2, then I’d suggest using a hybrid approach. When you land in your destination country, turn on roaming for 1 day so that you can access data and cellular service right off the bat. This will help you navigate your way around on your first day and take care of important business, especially when you’re tired and don’t have the capacity to deal with SIM cards and cellphone plans. The next day, you can go to a local cellular store and get a cheaper and more effective local plan. Make sure you turn off your roaming first, before you do the SIM swap.

I hope this quick guide to choosing the best cellular option while travelling really helps, and if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment on our main blog page, or contact us. And of course, if you need to arrange a reliable ride to and from the airport, AirportDirect is always ready to help.

Dave, signing off.