I’ve been a Fizz Mobile user for a few months now, now that I have to pay for my own mobile phone plan. With Rogers, my 10G plan was something like $80/month ($10 of that to pay off the value of my iPhone SE¹). I rarely used much more than 1G monthly (I am a habitual WiFi user), but Rogers kept throwing more data at me, so why not²?

Anyway, after a bit of research (and here https://www.planhub.ca/ontario was helpful), Fizz popped up to the head of the list. Fizz is owned by Quebecor/Videotron and is expanding throughout Canada (see their coverage map). They support physical SIM cards ($5, available at Circle K in Ontario, or, lately, via eSIM for free) and the migration from Rogers to Fizz was easy and quick. It goes without saying that I got to keep my phone number. And I got to cut my normal monthly spend to $20 for³ for Canada-wide calling, unlimited texting, and 3G of LTE ⁴data. What’s especially nice about Fizz’s data plan is that

• Unused data rolls over
• You can gift part of your unused data to a Fizz friend

Which seems very…um…fair⁵?

I ventured to the US this past week and instead of using my trusty Airolo eSIM, I chose instead a cheaper option: a data travel add-on for my Fizz account. Fizz offers better deals on roaming data in the US than even Airolo, which is a nice bonus. Airolo’s eSIMs have very limited time duration (7 days, 14 days, 30 days), but Fizz’s add-ons last throughout your current — and next — billing cycle, giving you up to 60 days with which to use your roaming data — even better, since I will make a return visit in the coming weeks…

Fizz’s travel add-ons are either data only, text only, or voice only. I typically use data-only, since I can use my free burner phone number from TextNow⁶ if I really need to send a text or have a traditional phone call. This means it’s not quite “roam like home”, but at a fraction of the cost, I’ll take it.

Anyway, I really have nothing to report. Everything just worked. I crossed the border, Waze navigation kept working, and I’m a happy camper. You can still receive SMS messages while roaming⁷, but you cannot send them⁸. I can’t tell you what happens if someone calls you since it didn’t happen while I was on the go.

If you want to give Fizz a whirl, using my referral code (INSWI) will net you (and me) some free $.

1. As always, there’s no free lunch. ↩︎
2. It’s not like they were going to LOWER my monthly fees or anything… ↩︎
3. After buying out the rest of the cost of my phone, of course. ↩︎
4. not 5G. Not a big deal to me. ↩︎
5. It is difficult for me to write the word “fair” about anything involving carriers or banks, but I managed… ↩︎
6. Free means ad-supported, a minor annoyance for having an actual phone number that works just fine over WiFi or cellular data services. ↩︎
7. Handy since so many 2FA logins rely on SMS (sigh) ↩︎
8. Unless you use the aforementioned burner phone app ↩︎