My usual advice for cellular phones and carriers:

• Don't sign a contract, ever.
• Don't buy a phone from a carrier, buy it from the manufacturer instead.
• Insist on an unlocked phone, so you can switch carriers easily, and you can travel internationally without having to worry about crazy roaming charges.
• Shop around, despite there only being 3 real carriers in Canada, they all have 'budget' brands and other MVNOs.

I've previously been on Speakout, Virgin, and Koodoo. And I just switched to Public Mobile.

Public Mobile is an MVNO that's now owned by Telus, so you get access to the Telus / Bell national network.

Public Mobile is a bit different because it:

• Has an option for a 90-day, 30-day, or 10-day plans
• Offers data-only plans
• Has discounts for automatic payments, referrals, and online community participation.
• Prefers that you bring your own device, and won't try to sell you one.
• Rewards loyalty and referrals with extra discounts

So I thought I'd give it a try.

I ordered a SIM online. They're $10, but you get that shipping cost refunded once you sign up. It arrived in a couple of days.

It was easy enough to swap SIMs. I took out my Virgin SIM and put in the Public Mobile one.

Then I went to the Public Mobile site and registered for an account and activated the SIM. At this point, I also ported my old number over from Virgin. I put in my account #, my name, and an alternate phone number. I uploaded a PDF copy of my last Virgin Bill.

I followed the instructions to power up my phone, and presto, the switch was complete. It took a few minutes for the port of my old number to complete, but overall the process was less than 10 minutes.

It works as expected. It's the Telus network, so LTE coverage and speeds are great. I didn't have to do any manual configuration of network settings or anything like that. It worked instantly.

It's been working just fine for the last couple of weeks.

Some advice if you're thinking of trying it out:

• You need an unlocked phone^[1]
• Don't switch until near the end of your monthly billing cycle -- otherwise your current carrier will still charge you for a full month.
• Send me an e-mail at miguel@menino.com and I'll give you my referral number :-)

There's a story behind how I ended up making this wallpaper. It involves installing a security camera, holding up a laptop, confusing Patrick Dempsey and John Cusack, and squirrels.

So here it is. John Cusack holding the boombox in "Say Anything."

(click the image for the full-sized version)

It works great with notifications on the lock screen!

Since the iPhone 5 uses a Nano SIM, you’ll have to trim it to fit. There are numerous tutorials out there on how to do this. I followed this one (PDF).

Some notes on cutting a SpeakOut SIM to Nano-SIM size:

• First of all, do this at your own risk. If you mess up, the SIM will be destroyed.
• I just used a scissors and cut very slowly, using the iPhone 5 SIM tray as a guide.
• If your SIM has 10 contact points (instead of the smaller newer SIMs with 6 contact points), you will have to cut into the unused contacts on SIM. Do this carefully and very slowly. Don’t cut into the embedded chip itself (see the tutorial above).
• Contrary to what others have said, the SIM thickness doesn’t matter. No need to sand it down. It fits fine.
  Here’s a photo of the different sizes of SpeakOut SIMs (click to zoom):

Unfortunately, most SpeakOut SIMs have 10 contact points on them, so you’ll have to cut through the unused ones:

Note: This post is more than a year old, so I’ve edited it with updated info. Edits are indicated.

Update 2:  I’ve made a new post with information on using an iPhone with the Speakout data plan, as well as Using an iPhone 5 on SpeakOut.

If you’re interested in using an iPhone in Canada, but aren’t interested in being stuck in a lengthy contract, perhaps using a prepaid service can be an option. Here’s my 3-step guide to using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada.

Step 1: Acquire an iPhone in Canada.

First thing you’ll need is an iPhone. You can grab one on eBay or from your friendly neighbourhood iPhone seller. I’m not going to go into how to acquire an iPhone in Canada, you can figure that bit out yourself. Maybe your husband just bought a new iPhone and wants you to have his old hand-me-down iPhone or something like that.

A few things to watch for, though. If you get a first generation iPhone (sometimes called a 2G or 2.5G iPhone), you’ll have to unlock it, since it was never sold in Canada. This is trivial, and can be accomplished using the iPhone Pwnage Tool on either Mac OS X or Windows.

If you acquire a newer 3G iPhone, it must either be a Rogers or Fido locked phone, or from one of the carriers that doesn’t lock their phones (ie: from Greece, Hong Kong, etc). There’s no 3G unlock yet, but it doesn’t matter if you have a Rogers-locked phone, because the popular GSM prepaid services all use the Rogers network anyway. If you have a Fido locked phone, your only option is to use a Fido prepaid plan, though.

[update: the iPhone Dev Team has unlocks for both the 3G and 3GS, as well as the original iPhone 2G — you can find that information on the iPhone Dev Team]

Step 2: Acquire a prepaid (“Pay as you go”) SIM.

There are a bunch of prepaid services to choose from in Canada, but you’ll want to go with one that uses a GSM network, such as Rogers Pay as You Go, PetroCanada Mobility, or my personal favourite: 7-11 SpeakOut.

The 7-11 SpeakOut service is a good deal for a bunch of reasons — free voicemail, free Caller ID, no contracts, airtime lasts a year and can be extended by just adding more airtime. For more information, visit the official or unofficial SpeakOut sites.

Every couple of months, 7-11 has a deal where you can buy $100 worth of airtime, and they’ll give you a free phone. It’s usually a Nokia 1600, 1208, or some similar “burner” phone. It’s pretty much just a basic GSM phone, with no frills. But we don’t really care about the phone, we just want the Subscriber Identity Module or SIM from the phone.

[update: in my opinion, the 7-11 service is the best, as the airtime lasts for a full year with any domination of top-up, and there is no cellular data to worry about. Rogers has its own Pay-As-You-Go service that is similar, but be sure to read all the fine print before signing on!]

You can usually find the SIM underneath the battery:

Take out the SIM and sell the phone on eBay 😉 You won’t need it anymore.

Step 3: Put the SIM in your iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G and you’re done.

Use a paperclip or the official Apple SIM removal tool (an Apple-branded paper clip) to open the iPhone SIM tray. It’s on the top of the phone — just push the paperclip into the hole next to it, and it will pop out.

Drop the SpeakOut SIM into the tray. It’s notched, so there’s no way to put it upside down. Just don’t force it in:

Note that the SpeakOut SIM works just fine in the 3G Rogers-locked phone, since the SpeakOut service also uses the Rogers network. So no unlock is needed.

That’s it, you’re done. You have an iPhone in Canada on a Pay As You Go plan. No contracts, no system access fees, nothin’.

The only downside is that there’s no mobile data available on SpeakOut, but this isn’t a huge problem since there’s always free wifi available somewhere.

[update: to clarify — the goal is NOT to have cellular data — 2G or 3G on the iPhone with Pay-As-You-Go, because it would probably be super expensive. Instead, I want just phone functions, voicemail, and SMS texting, which all work just fine on the 7-11 Speakout system. You can use the iPhones other data functions (e-mail, Safari, etc) on wifi networks. I read and reply to e-mails even when I’m not near a wifi network, and then the phone just sends and retrieves e-mail when I am near one.]