Freedom Mobile. Anyone on it?

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I am also on Freedom (previously Wind) with a iphone 5S. Been with them for 4 ish years. It's a mixed blessing. Maybe over the past year or so it has gotten marginally better. But there are some weird stuff that happens. I am in the GTA, so I should not have much problems, but they are there. Spotty on central 401, certain areas of downtown when you go inside a building lost signal, data log jams not receiving data event when signal is good.

But the plus side is the price and straightforward billing, which never gets screwed up. The latter is a huge bonus over the blue and red devils whom seem to purposely mess that up. I have had maybe 1 or 2 issues with my billing with Freedom in 4 years. Saving my time not dealing with it has been great.

As someone mentioned buying a phone with Wind might be the best option to take advantage of their network. I have an older phone and they don't seem very enthused to support it even though they are late to game and it was supported buy the other networks. Like Wifi calling, which would ease network issues.

I think they have no contracts so if you sign up you can always move onto something else.
 
sburns said:
I am also on Freedom (previously Wind) with a iphone 5S. Been with them for 4 ish years. It's a mixed blessing. Maybe over the past year or so it has gotten marginally better. But there are some weird stuff that happens. I am in the GTA, so I should not have much problems, but they are there. Spotty on central 401, certain areas of downtown when you go inside a building lost signal, data log jams not receiving data event when signal is good.

But the plus side is the price and straightforward billing, which never gets screwed up. The latter is a huge bonus over the blue and red devils whom seem to purposely mess that up. I have had maybe 1 or 2 issues with my billing with Freedom in 4 years. Saving my time not dealing with it has been great.

As someone mentioned buying a phone with Wind might be the best option to take advantage of their network. I have an older phone and they don't seem very enthused to support it even though they are late to game and it was supported buy the other networks. Like Wifi calling, which would ease network issues.

I think they have no contracts so if you sign up you can always move onto something else.
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A full-fledged freedom plan seems to be cheaper than a small data package from the big guys. Has anyone contemplated using freedom for data and a big guy for phone? Can dual-sim phones access both sims at once or do you have to select which one to use? This obviously costs more, but life is too short to be fighting with my phone to make a call.
 
RockerGuy said:
Or he could just give me his plan.

Don't blame a guy for taking an opportunity.
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Haha if I could sell it off I would

PrivatePilot said:
I would try a different handset before blaming it on the network. Having service in the same spot one day, and not the next doesn't sound like a network issue - the towers don't change location or strength, or turn on and off randomly. If you have a friend with an old phone they're not using any more see if they'll loan it to you for a few days and see if you find a difference. I suspect you will.

As for their out of network coverage, I've found it good. Face it, they don't have a network outside of their own, so you're roaming on the Big3. Yes, it's not a graceful handoff between their home network and roaming, and sometimes your phone tries to hold onto the home network for far too long before giving up and switching, but again, I consider that one of the minor inconveniences of saving a few hundred $$$ every month between both of our lines.



$80/Month on a the Big3 will get you a plan with a few gigs and steep data overages. After becoming used to 8-10 gigs at full speed, and no cost overages (at a reduced speed, sure, but whatever) you'll soon find yourself paying $150/month or more to enjoy the same amount.
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Idk, if I'm in my basement, I get zero bars to no service on Wind, but if it jumps to roaming I get 2 or 3. Getting it to make the jump is tough because it holds on for ever. It's happened on both my old Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5, and this Moto. Would 4G would make it better? Maybe, but I'm not paying $1200 to find out.

Ooo I remember another thing. When the phone says you have 2 bars and then you go to load something and it completely goes to zero service...

I have unlimited now and the most I've ever used since I joined Wind was 5 gigs, which was watching YouTube videos from Oshawa to the states in the car. I think I average like 1.25 gigs a month. I don't use it as a GPS often, so maybe thats why its so low, but damn 10 gigs is a lot.
 
Ashtonator said:
Thanks a lot for all your detailed feedback guys.

I think im gonig to do what some suggested and get a temp sim. I will report back once i have a decent amount of time with it to see how it performs.

Just a little update though. My brother got a temp line 3 days ago and standing side by side with him in Mississauga, his LTE on Freedom was about 70-80% faster than my Fido LTE when we ran a speed test.

Thanks again for the replies and ill update here once i get a little time with the network.
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It doesn't hurt to try. There is no contract & if you don't like it, just leave. Get an old phone from Kijiji which works with their network.

Another thing is they have antennas in the subway stations. Not alot can boast about that.
 
48Connor said:
but damn 10 gigs is a lot.
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Without video, yes it is. Video can consume a remarkable amount of data. I started watching amazon prime at night, you don't get to pick the quality, it just autoscales to the highest it can support. At 4K, that is ~7 GB/hour. I may need to switch to unlimited internet at home as this will put a hurting on my 400 GB limit.
 
Former Wind Mobile customer here (twice). I always found the issue to be how the AWS signal was delivered, not the coverage. i.e. above or below ground it was always a real issue to get a reliable connection.

Hopefully its improved since then.
 
RockerGuy said:
Or he could just give me his plan.

Don't blame a guy for taking an opportunity.
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You beat me to it. I was thinking the same thing.

sent from my Purple LGG4 on the GTAM app
 
For some, a lot of data isn't a big need - I know people who make do with 1-3 gigs a month, but these are the people who work in places with blanketed wifi, eat lunch at places with wifi, and then drive home to their wifi there.

For people like me who are on the road all day long, well....gigs go WAY faster. I had a 6 gig plan with Fido since 2007-2008 when they first came out, and I had held onto that plan with my fingernails until the day I left, but reality was it just wasn't enough anymore - I was regularly going at LEAST 1 to 2 gigs over every month, and at $25/Gig overage or whatever I was paying (which compared to their $50 !!! per gig overage fee now was a deal! Insane!) ended up leaving me with $120-$140/month bills, before taxes.

In the end, yeah, the Freedom network is not perfect. It does weird stuff sometimes, and yeah, there's holes in the service, but again, when I'm paying <$40/month for service now versus $140/month, that $1200/year in savings makes it totally worth it to me. My experience thus far is that 95% of the time it works acceptably well, and in the last few weeks alone with the LTE rollout things have got dramatically better even.
 
My plan gives me 400M and I never come close. Fido gave me a 1G promo last year and it was all wasted. Seems kinda desperate to watch videos on a phone, especially when there's a cheaper, better, venue called home!
 
Thinking of getting rid of my Telus plan and looking into Freedom. Spend most of my time in the GTA with the odd trip to the cottage in Wasaga....and from what I'm reading here the price can't be beat!
 
mimico_polak said:
Thinking of getting rid of my Telus plan and looking into Freedom. Spend most of my time in the GTA with the odd trip to the cottage in Wasaga....and from what I'm reading here the price can't be beat!
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Definately get a SIM and test it first before porting over your existing number. Some people find it good, some find it just acceptable, and some don't like it at all - really depends on what your expectations are to begin with, and how the service is in the areas you frequent/work/live.

With handset unlocking being mandated free now by the CRTC it's easier than ever to do exactly this - get your current handset unlocked and try it out on a competitor.
 
Hey guy, so i juist wanted to post this here. Luckily i didnt have a chance to switch to Freedom in the last little while and out of nowhere, Fido, Rogers, Telus and i think Bell came out with a similar deal to Freedom and i ended up getting it from Fido.
It;s unlimited text and talk plus 10GB of data.
But the promotion ends today or tomorrow so if youre interested, jump on it.
 
Yep, and you can thank Freedom for those plans. Competition is good.

The thing I still find beneficial with Freedom is the lack of overage fees on their plans, and that there's US roaming with many of the freedom plans included as well.

With Freedom, if you have a 10 gig plan and you use 11 gigs, you're data just gets throttled a little after your full speed allotment. With one of the big3, well...go over your plan by a gig, and bend over!
 
PrivatePilot said:
With one of the big3, well...go over your plan by a gig, and bend over!
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Except the corporate plans. They are structured reasonably and I hope competition pushes that structure out to all plans (I would say dream, but Freedom seems to have shaken things up a bit). On the corporate plan it's $10/2 gigs over the base amount.

My cynical side says the big guys are doing this to try to squeeze freedom to death and will then go back to their oligopoly.
 
GreyGhost said:
My cynical side says the big guys are doing this to try to squeeze freedom to death and will then go back to their oligopoly.
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Wouldn't be the first time, but if they really wanted to get rid of Freedom they'd just offer these plans permanently, not just for a magic 2-3 day period.

The big3 felt a stinging feeling when Freedom started advertising cheap iPhones with big (and cheap) data plans. This was without doubt their response to try to make a feeble swing back at Freedom.

And initially if you read the fine print the plans were actually only 5 gigs with a "bonus" 5 gigs that went away after a year or so, so classic bait and switch - only when people started dragging them through the mud for it did they backstep on that and make the allotments permanent.

But, Freedom still has the benefit of the US roaming and no overage fees on their offerings. For some, that's worth a lot (the USA roaming), or the peace of mind in knowing that there will never be bill shock.
 
PrivatePilot said:
Yep, and you can thank Freedom for those plans. Competition is good.

The thing I still find beneficial with Freedom is the lack of overage fees on their plans, and that there's US roaming with many of the freedom plans included as well.

With Freedom, if you have a 10 gig plan and you use 11 gigs, you're data just gets throttled a little after your full speed allotment. With one of the big3, well...go over your plan by a gig, and bend over!
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The thing that gets me with freedom is the transparency with billing & business. That alone has won my loyalty. Let's see if that remains with Shaw.
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