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A unique Virgin Mobile question

R

rocket999

Lurker
Im sorry if this is in the wrong section, but I couldn't figure out where else to put it.

So my friend lives in Canada about 25 minutes from where I live in Detroit. He is looking into getting a new mobile phone since his contract ran out. He wants to get an Android phone because it is what I have, and he sees how awesome it is. Now we were looking at plans for these phones, an virgin mobile looked great because of the no contract aspect. However the prices for the Canadian plans are quite a bit more. $55 a month for 200 minutes w/ texts and 1 GB of data.

So here is my question. If he were to buy a USA Virgin Mobile phone and plan and just use them in Canada, would it cause him extra fees because he wasn't in the states? The plans would be half as much. Would this work? I cant find info about this on their website.

Thank you for any info.

Sam
 
I am almost certain he would be charged international roaming fees, assuming he is able to get reception (I think virgin is a CDMA network, but I could be wrong).
 
They have Virgin Mobile in Canada, so the network is there. I just cant find anything about whether he will be charged for international roaming if he does this.
 
virgin mobile in the US is cdma (i think) where as in canada its gsm, so a us one more than likely wont even get signal in canada even though theres the same company.
 
As I said, if you can even get reception, there would almost certainly be a roaming fee. Otherwise, everyone would just go with this cheaper option. A great example is TMobile. You can get a TMO plan all you want in the US. If you go to Europe, where TMO is far bigger than it is here, even if you are using their network, you are paying roaming charges.
 
Alright. Thanks for the answers! I couldn't find anything about international roaming on the site, and I was wondering if they charged for it. He is looking at all the different carriors now.
 
Virgin Mobile USA and Virgin Mobile Canada are 2 different companies and as was pointed out one is GSM and the other is CDMA. VM USA doesn't have roaming, you either have a signal or you don't.
 
Virgin Mobile USA and Virgin Mobile CA are completely independent companies that operate under the "Virgin" franchise. VM USA uses CDMA and VM CA uses GSM (Sim cards). These network are not remotely compatible with each other, in addition to being two separate companies.

VM USA doesn't offer roaming (even within the United States) so it wouldn't do any good in Canada.

In short, that is like asking if a Verizon cell phone will work in Canada. Although Verizon can, VM USA can't since they don't have any roaming agreements.
 
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