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Comment by niyazpk | Hacker News Reader

Really wish they'd start supporting Canada. I recently moved to Canada from the US, and I have been using my US Fi number here in Canada too, but I'm dreading the day they will reach out to stop services on my number. (You cannot permanently use a Google Fi number outside the US right now).

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Do you think they care? Do they have rules around residency? I did a bit of searching and found people saying you can sign up and use it in Canada without issues as long as you can provide a US address which shouldn't be a problem, especially that you don't need a physical SIM anymore if your phone supports that.

However I was wondering if this is actually a good deal for us Canadians. I'm with Fido and pay CAD65 for unlimited calling, text and 10GB of data which is less than the USD60 that I saw online. That includes roaming between US/Canada/Mexico but at least right now and for the coming months, that's of little value.

Yes, you are right, Fi is expensive compared to many other options in Canada.

For me, this number is pretty much used for all my Bank/Investment/Social accounts (from my US life), and it will be too much work to replace this everywhere. Too many 2FA accounts use this phone number, etc. I'd like to get out of this dependency, but slowly if I have a choice.

I think the problem is that the Canadian wireless market is so messed up. While there are nominally more than two competitors, given that Bell and Telus share a network it's really just two providers. Plus, countries that have large rural areas to cover tend to have higher wireless prices in general.

It's hard for someone like Google to offer the same pricing for Canadian service given the poor market conditions there.

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