Visible DATA in Canada?

[DavePinMinn]

I'm no longer a Visible customer (the Pixel 6 debacle got me to dump the last of the three Visible phones we used to have).  BUT...

I'm going to be in Alberta (Waterton, Banff, Jasper) in an RV this year, and I need DATA.  Hopefully I WON'T have to do any fer-real work, but if I have to send images to a printer for a client or some other thing, I need to be able to do that.  TV is also streamed, but can be at 480p to reduce data need.

I'm thinking I should get an inexpensive data-only (we have other phones for everything else) 5G phone - TCL 30 LE or at MOST TCL 40 XE 5G.  Put it on the $25/mo plan and when I head to Canada switch to the $45/month plan.  Am I correct that it ONLY provides 2GB of data per day in Canada, then falls back to 3G speed?  My recollection is that 3G used to go up to about 3 mbps, but how fast is the fallback 3g on Visible?  Is it fast enough to even stream SD?

Is there any cost-effective way to boost the data available on Visible while in Canada?

[DeanKevin64]

The new Plus plan is only 2GB and from my understanding the 3G is it could be as low 500kbps speeds but could be wrong. The old plus plan, version 1, if a person still had it was .5GB of data but some people on Reddit said they weren't capped. I don't travel but it would be my suggestion to find a data SIM. You could try Visible again and maybe it won't be capped after 2GB. I would think for $45 dollar you could find a decent data SIM.

Also, 2GB doesn't far streaming a TV at 480p, maybe 2 1/2 hours.

[DavePinMinn]

Yeah, I know how fast even low quality streaming eats data!

Unfortunately, data sims in Canada are apparently astronomically expensive.  I read information from different people that it could be as much as $70 for 1GB of data, but I THINK that was at an airport.  For any "significant" amount of data the numbers are all over the place.  It appears you can be sSIMs cheaper, but I'm not sure if either my Samsung Galaxy s22 phones or the inexpensive Visible phones would use them.

[DeanKevin64]

If you mean eSIM your S22 is capable of that but not sure about the cheaper TCL phones you mentioned you would have to look that up. I didn't think SIM's would cost that much but then again, I don't travel and never did a search. I just wouldn't count on speeds being over 1Mbps after the 2GB are used. I am on Visible's Reddit page and have saw some said they weren't affected by the speed cap, some said they were, and IIRC there was even mention the plan didn't work for them in Canada. Not sure what to believe.

Instead of getting the basic plan now why not just wait until about a week or so before you leave and then just get the plus plan and grab someone's referral code and get it for $25 for that month. Not sure how long you plan on being in Canada, if it is longer than a month make sure to set autopay before you leave otherwise you will likely run into issues paying your bill from Canada.

PS, I am just surprised from your other posts about Visible that you are even considering them. I know Verizon offers an International plan but that is upwards of $100 a month and not sure what that gives. 

[DavePinMinn]

The only advantage I know of for eSim is there's no mailing of a SIM.  So you can activate (IN THEORY) instantly...

Having had Visible in the past, my expectations are very low.  They never got anywhere NEAR the speeds other people claimed, no matter where we were.  So, with luck, I'm hoping we can get somewhere around 1mbps semi-reliably... 

We started Visible with 3 phones, 2 personal and 1 data, and dumped the personal ones when Visible went to the "new" plan and we were being forced to buy new phones.  Tried to change to a Pixel 6 and it ended up being an utter nightmare.  Gave up on upgrading Visible and went elsewhere for personal phones.  When the data phone went on the "new" plan, Visible refused to put it on the $25/mo plan, charged $30, so I dumped the data phone account 2 months later when we stopped traveling at the end of last year.  Hope the extra $10 was worth losing the account.

I'll probably get a cheap 5G phone and start the cheap plan when we start traveling in a few weeks.  And HOPE they've improved their service.  But if they haven't improved their support I STILL don't want any service from Visible that I have to rely on.  So, it'll be a $100 gamble that Visible isn't still so impossible that I have to dump the service before we even HEAD for Canada in a few months.

Hopefully, it'll go better this time, but given their track record, I don't want to start ANY service with Visible a week before I actually need a device to be functional.