Calling Canada, whats cheapest? BONUS QUESTION!
 

My new girlfriend lives in Canada. I have free long distance, but only within the US. My question is, whats the cheapest, easiest way to call Canada? With a phone card? If so, which one from your expeience, and where can i get it? VoIP isn't really an option at this point because I don't have internet at home, though maybe at the end of the summer.

My second question is a long shot, but does anyone know if I can send text messages to Canada via the web? I know I can in the US with either MSN messenger or AIM, but they do not connect with Canada.

Are you saying that you cannot MSN Messenger someone in Canada if you're in the US?

I think he means he can't send text messages using MSN messenger to Canadian numbers....

You can, and I do daily but MSN (and AOL IM) have a feature where you can add someones mobile number and send them SMS messages from your computer via the messaging programs. The only problem is that you can only message American Cell phones.

I'm sorry I should have been more clear.

I live in Canada and the same feature exists for cell phones here. My friends and I can send each other text-messages from a computer using MSN. I don't see why it wouldn't work going from one country to the other, since phone-to-phone text messages cost the same when going across the border.

or with Yahoo messenger. It work for me to hong kong from here

If you have broadband you could use this.

This is what MSN tells me when I try and message her from MSN:

This service is only available with these carriers: Alltel, Cingular, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

*shrugs* maybe if I download the canadian version?

Don't know if this helps, but unless they've changed it, 10-10-987 charges $.39 to connect, and $.03 afterward.

I know you can do the math, but for those long, romantic conversations, you can go an hour for $2.19.

Not bad, and it works for western Europe, too.

P.S. That was on a land line. I've never tried it on a cell.

yea unfortuantly I don't have a land line at all. I'm going to try (and they have raised it to .53 cents for connection).

DL Teamspeak or ventrillo that gamers use all the time. Its free, you both just need a cheap $10 microphone if you dont already have one.

Depends where she lives. If she lives in the West I could give you/her a good deal for LD calls. Depends though. My company only exists in the west.

If you have broadband, get Vonage.
It'll give you unlimited long-distance for $25US (I think).

Thank you very much Streak, but she is in Montreal. I found one with 1.9 cents a minute and no fees. I'm going with that :)

Well, I was going to recommend a calling card from Costco and using it when your cell phone minutes were free...but nevermind.

:)

If she has access to MSN, why don't you start a IM chat with her and hit the 'Audio' button so you can talk to each other.

No the Vonage link I gave was 25 bucks a month to U.S. and Canada...

http://www.vonage.com/products_premium.php

ruggerp11, where in Montreal? That's where I live.

www.skype.com
I have been using this here in Japan. It is free to friends with skype, and only cost like 2 cents for me to call home to America.

It is a solid program.

I live just outside Toronto and my girlfriend lives in Detroit. Some things to try:

She sends me free text message via Bell Mobility's website. If she's using Rogers or another carrier, there's probably a similar feature.

We use calling cards, which work out to be pretty cheap. It lets us talk on a daily basis, along with my long distance plan, which gives me 1000 minutes anywhere in Canada or the US for $5/month. It's a special plan with Bell for people who bundle services (ie, mobile, internet and/or satellite) and may or may not be available in Quebec, but it's worth looking into. I pay about $36/month for my cell phone and aside from any use it is I make the money back in avoided long distance charges and then some. Once Bell accidentally charged me for my calls to Detroit for a month and the total was well over $150 (fortunately a quick call straightened that out).

Thank you Martian, she has service through Bell Mobility so it should work. Thank you, thank you, thank you! She gets these amazing phone cards from a corner store and I get 1.9 cents a minute so we're doing ok... now just to find a cheap way of travel (see my thread in the travel forum lol). Luckily I have MSN on my phone so I do ok as far as chatting goes but its nice to have a way to contact her via sms without getting charged every time.

ophelia783:
She is in LLe-Bizard. I visited at the end of April, and I am going back in Late July. Hopefully with another job I can plan on seeing her at least once a month :)

Ile Bizard?

thank you whenever I see it written it is always as lle-bizard and I never knew if it was an i or an l

That's so funny, that's like 5-10 minutes away from me!
Seriously, though, about the whole calling-card and YAK-type deals:
They're really not that cheap....
There are a lot of connection fees that they don't tell you about, and 1 cent a minute adds up, trust me!
Seriously, either get something like Vonage (my fiance uses it), or ask her to get a plan with unlimited long distance.

Trust me!!!!

ya, ile is French for 'island' and Montreal is composed of a series of islands so you see the word 'ile' prefixing the names of a lot of neighbourhoods. When the first letter is capitalized, it looks confusing next to the second letter: Ile versus ile...

When I'm in Mtl I also get very confused with the directions of the streets, because, compared to Toronto which is arranged north/south, east /west, montreal is nnw/sse etc. But you're lucky if you get to visit your girlfriend, because Mtl is one of the most beautiful cities in the world...

Janey,
Just for the record, Montreal is an island, not a series of islands. The Urban Community of Montreal is composed of a bunch of burroghs, but anytime you cross a bridge, you're off the island.

Ile Bizard is not its own island.

Not really saying that Ile Bizard is an island (even tho it is - http://www.answers.com/topic/le-bizard-quebec : Île Bizard is an island near the Island of Montreal. It was formerly a separate municipality named Saint-Raphaël-de-l'Île-Bizard, but is now part of the city of Montreal.) just that Montreal is composed of a series of islands (archipelego).

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclop...nd-of-Montreal :

The island of Montreal is boomerang-shaped (one end pointing roughly west, the other roughly north). It is the largest island in the Hochelaga Archipelago.

The island of Montreal is the major component of the territory of the city of Montreal, along with Ile-Bizard, Ile-Dorval, Ile Sainte-Helene, Ile Notre-Dame, Ile des Soeurs, and some 69 smaller islands. The island formerly contained 26 municipalities, all of which were merged into the City of Montreal on January 1, 2002. Some 26% of the population of Quebec live on the island.

A number of crossings connect the island to its surroundings.

having said that, I noticed myself as I drove around the city, the number of bridges that I had to cross.

look into your cell provider's plans for calling canada, you may be able to add it to your plan for fairly cheap.