US phone plan for Canadians

[YK-Phil]

My wife and I are planning a road trip to Central America next winter. I will be working half-time remotely for the duration of our trip so I need to stay in constant contact with my office, with reliable internet access at least to send and receive email, so even 2G would work for me. For the occasional large files, I'd be using wifi at local libraries and free hotspots.

For the USA, we are looking at plans by a small Canadian company, Roam Mobility, that offers "snowbird" plans on 3-month increments, for $49.95/month, which includes unlimited incoming and outgoing calls to Canada and the US, unlimited Canada/US/International SMS, and "unlimited" 4G data (throttled to 2G after 4 GB of data). The same company offers coverage in Mexico but on a weekly basis. I can use my unlocked work iPhone 5 on their network so I don't need to buy an additional handset. We haven't figured out coverage south of Mexico.

https://www.roammobility.com/snowbird-plans

Has anyone used that company in the USA? Is there anything better or cheaper that you can recommend for Canadian nationals? I'd also like to hear about cell/data options for countries south of the USA.

[Daley]

Can't respond to the Roam Mobility questions, but their price for what is offered in the US is a decent rate... but I will ask how much will you really need? How much talk time and data are we really talking about here day to day to week to month - especially as you wander further towards the Equator where things will increase in cost for us gringos.

As far as helping you out, look into Truphone SIM and KnowRoaming, and have a link: http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/

Oddly, Google Fi might be an option to consider as well, but only if the price of the handset and the rates would actually prove to be a savings and dramatic conveneice over stuffing in other SIM cards in the phone you have now.