If you Google "Telus HSPA coverage Manitoba" you will find dozens of links and lots of discussion about what is happening in Manitoba. These are probably the best description of what is happening:
http://tek.ca/2011/02/telus-hs.....uary-16th/
or http://mobilesyrup.com/2011/02.....uary-16th/
There are lots of unhappy people.

Telus partnered with Sask Tel so Saskatchewan is covered or in the process of being covered. Telus and MTS did not partner.

MTS partnered with Rogers for HSDPA. The rollout of the MTS HSDPA is scheduled for the end of March. I was in Manitoba at the beginning of February and Rogers/Speakout phones both showed more 3G coverage than on a visit last fall so the network is expanding.
http://www.thompsoncitizen.net.....toba-begin

Telus apparently bought spectrum in Manitoba for province wide coverage, so they can't force MTS to provide roaming. Bell didn't bid on that auction — partly because of their deal to carve Canada in half with Telus. Bell could force MTS to allow roaming for phone and text because they have no spectrum licensed in Manitoba — where that leaves President's Choice is anybody's guess.
http://www.howardforums.com/pr.....mp;page=14
Scroll down to a post by Que_Ball that has explanation and links explaining the rules.

Coverage in Manitoba is going to be strange for a long time to come. MTS have roaming agreements with Telus and Bell for voice and text but no data on Telus or Bell CDMA phones — that covers most of the province. MTS covers most of the province for voice and text and parts of the province with data on their CDMA network. Rogers covers a fairly large part of Southern Manitoba with their GSM network. There is less coverage than MTS CDMA in lots or rural areas and nothing in the north. When the Rogers/MTS partnership is rolled out completely, MTS and Rogers 3G phones will have as much or more coverage than the MTS CDMA network. You can roam outside Manitoba on the Rogers network with your MTS 3G phone. You can roam outside Manitoba with your MTS CDMA phone on the Telus and Bell Networks.

Confused yet?

Telus and/or Bell will not ever have full province wide 3G coverage without building a huge amount of towers and repeater sites. That will happen slowly if at all. They may provide coverage along the major highways in southern Manitoba but even that will not be complete in the forseeable future.

Thanks again!

President's Choice/Loblaws still mostly sell the older CDMA phones, but they now sell a few phones that do take SIM cards. You can also buy separate President's Choice SIM cards for $10 here in Halifax. I do not know if you can buy the SIM cards in all areas of Canada though.

I do not know for sure if Bell/Telus have activated HSDPA towers in Manitoba yet. It is supposed to happen real soon now if it has not already. I do not live there, so I cannot give a first hand experience. You need to be near a Bell/Telus HSDPA tower for President's Choice Mobile SIMs to work.

When shopping for a phone, you need to find one that works with Bell, Telus, Virgin or Koodo, and it has to be unlocked. These phones should work fine with T-mobile's 2G network.

Thanks for all the time and expertice answering questions from dum__ss newbie like myself!

A President's Choice SIM costs $10, with $10 of airtime, Speak-out SIM cards cost $25 and only come with $5 of airtime.

President's Choice's monthly fee with data and SAF is about $8, Speak-out's fee is $11.25

President's Choice calls are 20 cents a minute. Speak-out charges 25 cents.

As for for disadvantages, Bell's business practices still scares me. Then again, Roger's FIDO division also did me wrong. I think it is really good to have another company like Loblaws or 7-11 as intermediaries. It helps that their success revolves around keeping their customers happy. They certainly have more clout when dealing with the telcos than I would. Negative customer satisfaction seems not to affect the telcos bottom line.

is the browsing less restrictive now as opposed to Rogers?

Have you given another try at Pc Mobile? it should have better coverage than Rogers in your area.

APN: proxy.bell.ca
Proxy: web.wireless.bell.ca
Port: 80

President's Choice Mobile UBM is working for my Nokia E71 at 3G speed!

I went to Loblaws and got the $10 SIM which came with a $10 credit, activated over the phone, added the UMB for $0.25 a day. The system deducts right away $0.40 for the 911 fee and $0.25 UMB, leaving a balance of $9.35. I configured the APN as described above. Some people reported you have to create this new APN without the SIM inserted and you might have to pull out the SIM and re-insert it twice and make sure the settings are remembered correctly by the phone. In my case, I did not have to do that. The phone remembered the settings correctly on the first try.

I have been browsing since this afternoon and regularly checked the balance, it is still at $9.35

I have yet to find a website or application that does not work properly. So far, regular browsing, youtube, skype VoIP, MSN, TV broadcast such as live BBC, CNN, CBC etc. work properly

I tested several times at different moments of the day with dslreports\mspeed and I consistently get speeds between 1.2 and 1.8 Mbits/s so I am quite happy for 25 cents!

By the way, is that a good speed for 3G? how fast is Bell 3G supposed to be?

Also, it was reported very recently it is working in 3G without the WAP browsing limitations.

When you tried last time, were you aware of these two different APN settings?

If however, if you get you hands on a Bell Nokia 2730, UMB works great. The problem is the phone is garbage because of the fecal matter Bell adds to the phone.

I hope things have changed, but it was certainly like that in January.

I tell you what I do with my E71 besides browsing. I use MGMaps, Google maps, upload pics to Fickr and OVI directly, I can Gmail, send and receive free SMS messages with Google Voice, and other stuff I do not remember right now. All for $10.

What exactly does that mean in plain English? how limiting is that?