Canada eSIM
Data for Canada on Rogers and Bell, from $8.89. It never expires, tethering is included, and you install Orbislo once rather than once per trip.
- Networks
- Rogers and Bell
- Real speed
- 58 Mbps median, 13 Mbps for the slowest tenth1,642 travellers, rolling 90 days
- 5G
- yes, non standalone
- Throttle
- None on metered plans
- Tethering
- Allowed on every plan
Plans for Canada
| Data | Validity | Price per GB | Price | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 GB | Never expires | $8.89 | $8.89 | |
| 3 GB | Never expires | $4.96 | $14.89 | |
| 5 GBMost travellers | Never expires | $3.98 | $19.89 | |
| 10 GB | Never expires | $2.99 | $29.89 | |
| 20 GB | Never expires | $2.29 | $45.89 | |
| 50 GB | Never expires | $1.58 | $78.89 |
Every plan works the moment you land. Unused data returns to your wallet when the plan ends, and there is 100 MB of free rescue data on your account even at zero balance.
What 58 Mbps actually means in Canada
Travellers on Orbislo in Canada see a median download of 58 Mbps, measured across 1642 real sessions rather than a speed test we ran ourselves. That puts Canada well above the North America median of 34 Mbps, and 56th out of the 159 destinations we have measured.
The tenth percentile is 13 Mbps. That gap between the median and the floor is normal and it is where the frustration lives: the connection is quick most of the time and noticeably slow in the busiest few percent of moments, typically at transport hubs at peak hour.
That is enough for everything most travellers do: maps, messaging, video calls, streaming at high definition, and tethering a laptop for ordinary work. It is not enough to be casual about uploading a day of raw photographs.
Which networks you will be on
Orbislo carries traffic in Canada on Rogers and Bell. Your phone is not tied to one of them. When the network you are attached to congests or drops, the profile moves you to the other, and it happens without a prompt and without you noticing anything except that the connection kept working.
This matters more than the headline speed. Almost every travel eSIM sold today resells a single upstream agreement per country, so when that one network has a bad hour you have a bad hour with it and your only option is to buy a second eSIM from somebody else. A profile with more than one network behind it can make a decision you never see.
5G in Canada: yes, non standalone. Worth knowing that 5G on a travel profile is normal rather than special, and that the tenth percentile above is the number that will decide how the trip feels, not the generation label in the status bar.
What data costs in Canada
A 100 MB plan for Canada starts at $0.30, which is $0.00 a gigabyte. That is the number to compare between providers, because a headline price attached to a different allowance tells you nothing.
The comparison most providers would rather you did not run is cost per gigabyte actually used. Independent surveys of travel data put the share of purchased data lost to expiry between 20 and 35 percent, because a plan that expires on day thirty deletes what you did not get through. Orbislo data has no expiry date, so the gigabyte you paid for is still there on the next trip. At the same headline price that is 25 to 40 percent more usable data, and in Canada it means the effective cost is nearer $0.00 a gigabyte than $0.00.
Because nothing expires, the cheapest way to buy for Canada is to buy slightly less than you think you need and top up if you run out. Topping up takes about ten seconds and does not involve installing anything. Buying too much is the expensive mistake everywhere else and merely a neutral one here.
Landing in Canada
Install before you fly, on your home wifi. The profile downloads while you still have a connection you trust, then sits dormant until you land in Canada and it attaches to Rogers. Median time from tapping install to having service across all Orbislo orders is 41 seconds.
On landing there is one thing to check and it is the thing that goes wrong about sixty percent of the time people tell us they have no service: data roaming has to be switched on for the Orbislo line. It is off by default on both iOS and Android, and it has nothing to do with roaming charges here, because the plan is prepaid and there is no bill to run up. Turn it on for the Orbislo line and leave it off for your home line, and your home number keeps working for calls and bank codes without costing anything.
Coverage across Canada
The measurements above are aggregated across Canada, and a national median hides real variation. We publish separate figures for Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Banff, because the difference between a capital and a coastal town is usually larger than the difference between two countries.
Outside the cities, coverage follows the same pattern it does everywhere: the main roads and the tourist corridors are well served, and it thins in the mountains and on the water. No travel eSIM changes that, because it is the same physical network the local population uses. What a multi network profile changes is which of the available towers you get to use.
What is restricted in Canada
- Phones bought outside Canada: Bell says VoLTE-capable phones that are not certified for VoLTE on its network, including devices bought outside Canada, lose calls, texts, data and 9-1-1 access on Bell once its 3G network is gone, together with 3G-only phones and 4G phones without VoLTE.
- Grey-market phones: Rogers warns that phones bought from international sellers and not certified for use in Canada may work for 4G or 5G data, but VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling usually will not work with Canadian carriers.
- Hand-held phones while driving: Every Canadian province and territory except Nunavut has a law that bans or restricts using a hand-held phone or similar device while driving. Calling 9-1-1 in an emergency is generally allowed, ideally from a safe place.
Worth knowing about Canada
- A Canadian provider has to suspend data roaming charges once they reach 100 dollars inside a single monthly billing cycle, unless the account holder agrees to pay more. The cap applies per account however many devices sit on it, and money spent on a roaming add on counts towards it.
- Data overage charges on a Canadian plan stop at 50 dollars in a billing cycle on the same terms, and the price of any data add on is counted inside that 50.
- Any handset a Canadian provider supplies has to be handed over unlocked, and a device that is or becomes locked to a network has to be unlocked, free of charge, whenever the customer asks.
- The moment a device on a Canadian plan starts roaming in another country, the provider has to tell both the account holder and the person carrying the device what voice, text and data will cost there, at no charge for the notification.
- A Canadian prepaid account gets at least seven calendar days after its commitment period ends to top up free of charge, keeping both the line active and whatever balance was left on it.
- A mobile phone with no Canadian service plan at all can still dial 9-1-1 in an emergency and get basic wireless 9-1-1 service, according to the telecom regulator.
- With Enhanced 9-1-1, Canadian carriers pass the caller's approximate location to the 9-1-1 centre, usually to within 50 to 300 metres, using GPS or the distance from nearby towers. This applies to phones on prepaid minutes as well as on a service plan.
- In areas that only have Basic 9-1-1, a wireless call goes to the 9-1-1 centre serving the tower the phone is connected to, and the caller must tell the operator where they are, because no location is passed on automatically.
- Text with 9-1-1 is for people with hearing or speech impairments and requires registering with a Canadian wireless provider first. A registered user still dials 9-1-1, and the operator then switches the conversation to text.
- Canada's Alert Ready system sends life-threatening emergency alerts to phones, but only to a compatible device running current software and connected to an LTE network when the alert is issued, or joining one while it is still active.
- Since 30 November 2023, anyone in Canada who is thinking about suicide, or worried about someone, can call or text 9-8-8 free at any hour for support in English or French.
How Canada compares across North America
- Speed rank
- 2 of 10 destinations we have measured in North America
- Regional median
- 33 Mbps
- Consistency
- The slowest tenth still reaches 22 percent of the median
- Upstream networks
- 2, Rogers, Bell
- 5G
- Yes, non standalone
- Next fastest nearby
- United States, 64 Mbps
- Next slowest nearby
- Mexico, 44 Mbps
- Cities with their own page
- 4: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Banff
- tenth percentile
- 13 Mbps
- Behind these figures
- 1642 travellers, rolling 90 days
