Most Canadian carriers do a “use your plan like you would at home” but the price for it is about USD 10 per day, which is a huge cost compared to many travel eSIMs or a local SIM/eSiM.
In Canada the way to work around 2FA SMS is to have mobile data roaming off with roaming on, (then switch your sim card to your home number). The incoming text messages and leaving incoming calls ignored won’t charge you. It will only charge if you use any mobile data at all, send a text, SMS, MMS message, make any call (including to voicemail) or accept any call (some charge for rejecting a call but won’t if you let it timeout on its own).
Got a T-Mobile eSIM while travelling in the US last year to get around this. The eSIM was a great deal (can’t remember the specifics, but pretty cheap with a decent amount of data). I was making two trips to California and Georgia in the same 30 day window, so it was useful to have.
The only downside was that I couldn’t activate the eSIM before getting to the US, and LAX didn’t appear to have any WiFi while we were there (not sure if that was generally true for the time, or if it was just offline). So I wound up having to roam to get the eSIM, and to get a text message from the shuttle that was picking us up from the airport (as I had to give them that in advance, and didn’t know what my US number would be until I got there).
Still saved us some money, but it was a bit of a PITA to activate with no WiFi available at the airport.
Yeah, I keep that for emergencies (you only pay if you use it) and also turn my Telus on occasionally to check text messages and do two factor authentication (incoming texts are free), but CAD$15 a day to “roam like home” is more expensive than an entire month with a local SIM in many countries.
Most Canadian carriers do a “use your plan like you would at home” but the price for it is about USD 10 per day, which is a huge cost compared to many travel eSIMs or a local SIM/eSiM.
I hate having to use it, but when so many terrible services only allow sms 2fa it is mandatory to have as an option when travelling out of country.
In Canada the way to work around 2FA SMS is to have mobile data roaming off with roaming on, (then switch your sim card to your home number). The incoming text messages and leaving incoming calls ignored won’t charge you. It will only charge if you use any mobile data at all, send a text, SMS, MMS message, make any call (including to voicemail) or accept any call (some charge for rejecting a call but won’t if you let it timeout on its own).
Got a T-Mobile eSIM while travelling in the US last year to get around this. The eSIM was a great deal (can’t remember the specifics, but pretty cheap with a decent amount of data). I was making two trips to California and Georgia in the same 30 day window, so it was useful to have.
The only downside was that I couldn’t activate the eSIM before getting to the US, and LAX didn’t appear to have any WiFi while we were there (not sure if that was generally true for the time, or if it was just offline). So I wound up having to roam to get the eSIM, and to get a text message from the shuttle that was picking us up from the airport (as I had to give them that in advance, and didn’t know what my US number would be until I got there).
Still saved us some money, but it was a bit of a PITA to activate with no WiFi available at the airport.
Yeah, I keep that for emergencies (you only pay if you use it) and also turn my Telus on occasionally to check text messages and do two factor authentication (incoming texts are free), but CAD$15 a day to “roam like home” is more expensive than an entire month with a local SIM in many countries.
And yet still a vast improvement on the old model of “you went off airplane mode, please sell your plasma while applying for a second mortgage.”