Phones

Sorry about the lack of updates lately, I've been preoccupied with the task of getting us Canadian mobile phones. The problem is, as we'be just arrived to the country we don't have credit ratings so we can't get "normal" pay monthly phones... so the only alternative was got get prepaid "Pay as you Go" phones.

The problem with PayG phones generally is that you can't use them abroad, and this is definetly something we'd ideally want to do. So I had a look around and came up with Bell who on their site claims that "Bell Mobility is the only carrier to offer you not only North American roaming and long distance but we also have international capabilities as well. No other Canadian carrier offers overseas calling to their prepaid customers."

So first stop, Bell store to find out more details. Just to confirm that I had understood everything correctly, I first asked if I could use my phone abroad - to which the chirpy girl answered "Oh no, not our phones - you need to go to Rogers or FIDO, their phones use SIM cards." I figured she knew what she was talking about so I headed over to Rogers (as we had been warned against FIDO - but now Rogers has bought FIDO so it probably doesn't matter anymore anyway) where a really nice young man helped me to choose two phones.

Only they were out of stock. As they were in the next shop I visited. And the third one. At this point it was seriously time for lunch so I headed home where I made some enquiries on where I could locate a shop that would actually sell me these phones. After some luck, I managed to find a shop near Dragon's work place - unfortunately I had underestimated the amount of traffic on certain roads and didn't get there in time so I had to postpone getting the goodies for today.

Now we are proud owners of Nokia 3120 (for Dragon) and Sony Ericsson T637 (for me). The whole mobile system here is just a bit difficult to get to grips with... It seems to be similar to American "receiver pays for the calls" system where some of the incoming calls cost me. My new phone number has Vancouver area code, so if someone outside Vancouver area calls me I have to pay the difference between a local call and a long distance call or something like that. In fact, I have to pay for all incoming calls, except if they come from another Rogers PayG phone. I can send text messages to Finland and receive them (which is most important as this is the primary way we communicate with Chu), but I can't call Finland and it's still a bit unclear if I can receive calls from abroad.

Sigh. Well, at least my new toy looks black and shiny: I've been using Nokias since day 0, but I've been hearing great things about these new Sony Ericsson phones so I decided to give it a go. I've still got my Nokia 6600 in case I really really don't like it.

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