in the UK I have a contract with 3G for my iPad. £15 a month 15Gb. This does me well and I find I can get coverage in 99% of situations.

Im a bit concerned about finding a similar service in Canada. You see, Im a truck driver and my iPad is like my right arm when Im on the road.

Anyone shed any light on the availability, cost of this kind of service?

Cheers

Forget about 99% coverage in the interior of BC. Drive north from Kamloops and you can lose coverage for a couple of hours. It can be very patchy.

Aside from the coverage issue be prepared to pay a lot more for mobile connectivity in Canada, home to some of the most expensive cellular services in the world.

Bell Mobility & Rogers are the two dominant carriers. A search of their websites should give you mobile data package pricing. If you are regularly driving to the US it might be worthwhile looking at a US provider or some better roaming package. Perhaps a question to pose in the truck drivers forum?

It seems to me unlikely that a truck driver based in Canada could make enough money to support a wireless internet device with roaming. I think that's an example of not being ready for life being different in another country.

OP.....

A couple of things to take into consideration here:

1. Ontario is bigger than the whole of the UK
2. Roaming charges in NA is high, they have to make their money somehow, especially here where they've been forced to go down to 2yr contracts as opposed to the 3yr they had before
3. They still don't have the air credit and you are able to receive calls on PAYG here.....no credit, no call period.

4. iPad eh...not to late to go Android

Bell seem to be offering 5GB for $40+tax. They state "Data use exceeding 5GB will be charged $10/GB"....so um, yea. Enjoy getting your wallet emptied.

You can see the coverage here: http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Coverage_map

I'd imagine, given it's a cartel/oligopoly, the other big names will provide near or completely identical pricing. Coverage, overall, will likely be similar.

I'd guess if you're in the US it would be cheaper to maintain a separate service with one of their providers. I've heard people mentioning T-Mobile being cheap but I can't verify that.

Relevance? He's looking to move to southern central BC.

To be fair that doesn't seem to be stated?

I still don't see it's relevance. The majority of Canada's territories and provinces are larger than the UK. What's it got to do with the OP's question?

Well I'd imagine it was to draw attention to the fact that the territory is massive (and essentially uninhabited) and therefore the OP should expect to drive for days with next to no service.

This is the telus rate for Ipad plans and coverage http://mobility.telus.com/en/BC/ipad_plans/index.shtml

You pay more for I Pad and I Phone plans here than android plans. Close to the US border, even when in Canada can end up in roaming charges.

I would not go near Bell for anything. Had a plan with them for 3 years and from beginning to end they made errors and incorrect billing. Even after I moved carrier, they still tried to billed me and tried to collect.

I've never had any issues with Bell. Rogers on the other hand is another story. But seeing as how there's only really a choice of 3 carriers I don't think customer service differs too much. They all try every trick in the book to get another couple $ out of you.

Quite the contrary, Bell were awful, I am with Rogers now and have had no issues at all.

It's a very local thing isn't it? At my house Rogers doesn't work at all for Cell coverage. YMMV depending upon location. Overall of course Rogers and Bell are as equally crap as each other.

And TELUS.

Trucking where exactly?

It does depend on where you're going to be. If you're in the western US a lot it would make more sense to use Verizon for example.

But reliable 3G coverage on interstate and rural highways is unlikely, look at the Verizon coverage map for example, as soon as you get out west it's limited to the towns. And Verizon has the best coverage.