Speakout 7-11 is the best Canadian pre-paid (“pay as you go”) carrier. No contracts, cheap data & texting, all on the Rogers network. Well, until the end of 2012, if you buy $100 worth of airtime, you’ll receive a $25 bonus, and an unlocked Alcatel 356 phone.

You’ve probably seen my previous posts about using an iPhone on SpeakOut. It works well, and with the unlimited texting and data bundles, it’s a bargain.

I tend to buy a $100 top-up voucher whenever I start running low. SpeakOut often has promotions where you can get a free phone or bonus airtime, etc.

Right now, until the end of December 2012, the deal is a free Alcatel 356 phone. It’s a decent ‘burner’ — Qwerty keyboard and a crappy camera. But hey, it’s free.

As a bonus, it’s unlocked. Which means you can use it when travelling to the USA, if you’re so inclined.

To test if the SpeakOut Alcatel 356 was unlocked or not, I put a T-Mobile SIM in there. Yup, works just fine.

If you try a Bell or Telus (or Virgin or Koodo) SIM in this phone, it probably won’t work. Not because the phone is locked, but because Bell & Telus don’t really have a standard GSM network in Canada. Their network requires an HSPA or LTE (often known as 3G and 4G) phone to connect.

The Rogers network, on the other hand, does work with standard GSM, GPRS, Edge, HSPA, LTE, etc.

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:

Well it turns out that there’s no 3rd party unlock available for the T-Mobile Nokia 1661. I did have some success using a SIM emulator chip that I bought on eBay, though.

It doesn’t matter if you can unlock it with other tools or not, though, because T-Mobile is actually a decent mobile carrier. If you call them and ask, they’ll send you an unlock code. How easy is that? There’s even a 1-800 number to call from Canada (so you won’t use your T-mobile airtime by dialing 611 while roaming on Rogers).

You need to find your IMEI number — It should be on a label under the battery. Copy it down carefully. You can also find it by pressing *#06# on the phone.

Call T-Mobile. Tell them you’d like to SIM-unlock your phone while travelling to Canada. They’ll ask for your IMEI number and an e-mail address, and submit a request. A few hours later you’ll receive an e-mail with instructions.

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.]