How do prepaid cell phone cards work when you are away from home?

I don't know anything about your not-a-plan, but for many cellphones, long distance is billed identically to local calls. So, for me, calling somebody in Philly (from my Philly number) is equivalent to calling somebody in California. International is different, however, and is billed at a different rate. can I buy prepaid phone cards down there for the phone and avoid long distance rates when calling people in that local area? No. All calls are going to be billed as coming from your phone number. If your not-a-plan differentiates between local and long distance calls, then all of those calls are going to be long distance. There also may be roaming fees involved.

Looking at the Rogers pay-as-you-go http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/plans, it looks like the major charges you will have to be concerned with are weekday daytime rates, when rates are significantly higher when you call during the daytime on weekdays. You should be able to call any province in Canada for "free" or 1 cent/minute (depending on your plan) if you call between 6pm and 8am on a weekday, or the weekend. If you call between 8am and 6pm, you could be on the hook for 30 (or more) cents per minute. You should be able to add value to your phone as you normally do, and call anyone within Canada, without having to do anything special. As Netzapper stated, your phone number is tied to an area code. Regardless of where you are physically located you will be billed from that area code.

Hardcore Poser - wow. Thanks. I didn't even know how my not-a-plan plan worked. Is it possible to provide a link to the page where you found this info?

Ok, wait a second, folks. Then what the hell are prepaid cell phone cards for????????

As far as I can understand, there are two ways of getting money into a prepaid cell phone account. One is to do a bank transfer/credit card purchase for whatever amount you choose from the provider's website. Another is to buy prepaid cards at 7-11 or Best Buy or whatever. You get a receipt with a PIN or you scratch off the stuff on the card to reveal a PIN, which you then punch into your phone. This is for people who don't have bank accounts/credit cards, like kids, or who want to more explicitly control cell phone spending (like parents). In the US, there are no long distance charges on most cell phone plans anymore. When I moved to Canada, I was rather bemused to find out the pricing is similar to that of US plans in like 1996.

The numbers are from Rogers' info sheets. I found it frustrating compiling this info from six different websites, all of which seemed designed to impress without informing, so I just grabbed all the brochures in the mall kiosks. And yeah, Canada's rates are terrible. It's amazing that there haven't been any sort of user boycotts. We get F'ed by Fido, Borked by Bell, Rogered by Rogers and, um, Deflowered(?) by Virgin yet noone raises a fuss. The same thing happens with book prices and we protest until Chapters (temporarily) lowers prices. People pay hundreds a year for phones, and ... nothing? Very strange how docile a marketplace we are.

Nicely put. You've summed up the reason why I'm not on a plan nicely. But it looks like even without a plan, they've still got you bent over.

Maybe this is showing how little I know about how cell phones work but: 1. If the province you're travelling to is on the Roger's network aren't the calls you make there to local numbers going to be treated as local by your phone? 2. Couldn't you get the phone unlocked and pop in a different SIM card for a pay as you go plan in that province?

any portmanteau..: From my rookie investigations, the answers are 1. No, and 2. Yes but SIM cards cost. If you can borrow one from a friend while there that would be optimal. kitkat: The prepaid rates are bad, but don't matter as much to me. I have such low usage that a single $100 card (which is the only denomination that lasts for a year, at least for Rogers and Virgin) should last me almost that entire year. The other 'gotcha' with prepaid plans is that, when you top up, your entire balance is now set to expire at the rate of your most recent top-up card. So, for example, if you bought a $40 card (which expires in 30 days) on Nov. 15, used $10 of it, then bought another $40 card today, you would now have $70 to use within the next 30 days. And if this keeps up, the balance you have to use before losing it grows and grows. For people like me who only use it for grocery runs and emergencies, that soon winds up being way more minutes than I'd be able to use, so eventually I would wind up with a whack of minutes I paid for being lost. This already happened to my wife's account - almost $100 down the drain due to lack of use. Not something that people who need the cheapness of prepaid plans would see as a 'feature;' no wonder then that you have to fish it out of the salespeople to hear about this little moneymaker rule of theirs.