Bylo: Your "Absolutely" is not so Absolute!

It is when the issue revolves around GSM vs. CDMA. The truth is that you can't use a North American CDMA phone in any of "Asia/Europe."

The truth is that in asia/europe they GSM phones operate at 900 and 1800 MHz while here in North America GSM operates on 850 and 1900 MHz. Thus GSM phones which have only the 850 1900 MHz bands will not work outside North America and vice versa.

If you'd read my many previous posts on this subject you'd see that I've cautioned people about making sure their phone operates on the bands required for the countries they intend to use it in. Do I really need to repeat that warning on every post I make, even on those posts that don't relate to that particular issue?

The truth is that in asia/europe they GSM phones operate at 900 and 1800 MHz while here in North America GSM operates on 850 and 1900 MHz. Thus GSM phones which have only the 850 1900 MHz bands will not work outside North America and vice versa.

True there are some phones out there with all 4 frequencies which will work in europe/asia as well as North America. If one wants this portability one should double check before buying a phone.

I prefer GSM like rogers/fido/speakout because I can use the phone even in asia/europe. And I can easily upgrade my phone just by moving my simcard from the old phone to the new one

Absolutely. Also there's a far greater selection of GSM phones than CDMA and they become available on the market much sooner than CDMA.

One advantage of CDMA over GSM is that Bell has cell coverage in a few remote places that Rogers doesn't, e.g. Iqaluit, NU 😉

2 - You can buy a $100 voucher good for 365 days.

3 - Choice of phones is very good. Much better than Speak-Out.

4 - If your usage is more than 95 minutes/month you better off with one of Virgin's plans.

5 - There is no charge to switch back and forth between plans.

http://www.virginmobile.ca/sit.....mer_03.htm

What this means is if you plan on talking for more than ~45 minutes a month on your phone the $10 plan from virgin is the better bang for your buck. If you plan on using your phone less than that speakout will be the better deal because 20 cents per minute is cheaper than virgin's 30 cents per minute.

If you pay $0 a month, you start with 0 minutes and pay 30 cents a minute. In other words, if you talk for 100 minutes in a month, the cost is 0.30 * 100 = $30

There's actually a good recap of the math here.