EPILOGUE:

Made the switch.

Fairly seamless.

The two people on staff (Steeles/Dufferin location) were knowledgeable and set things up seamlessly.

I confirmed that I had (and was able to use) cell coverage in the subway stations and tunnels between Pioneer Village (Steeles) and Wilson.

My one burp is that I'm having an issue turning on Wifi Calling, seems to be a handshake issue between phone and carrier. Will investigate.

Speedtest reports 267Mbps down/66.5 Mbps up at home (though I neglected to do a "before" test with Koodo).

Thanks to all who provided feedback.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada

@evanleibovitch / @el56

On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 11:09 PM Evan Leibovitch <evanleibovitch@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all.

I was more than a little ticked off to discover that Telus has no plans to offer 5G to its mid-brand Koodo customers, even though its flagship Telus and low-end Public Mobile brands already have it.

Now that Freedom Mobile is owned by Videotron, perhaps Canada's least-awful telco, I had another look. They have a 5G plan for the same money that I'm paying Koodo for 4G with 10GB more per month. Furthermore Freedom is the only telco usable in the Toronto subway, with service in all stations and two Line-1 tunnel sections (Vaughan to Wilson and St.George to Yonge/Bloor).

Pretty well everywhere I usually go these days is within Freedom's 5G coverage area. with 4G elsewhere (including the non-Freedom "nationwide" network coverage). I don't care about international roaming, I have a different SIM for that. And as it turns out the cell tower closest to my home is a Freedom one.

Still, I have a few concerns. Reviews for Freedom on Trustpilot are plentiful and almost universally vicious. So long as everything Just Works my customer service interactions tend to be limited to initial setup.

Does anyone here have any real-life data points to offer? Thanks!

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56