Canadian roaming

If you get to Canada often then there are two options:

1. If you have AT&T then get the AT&T Canada plan, they have a $4/month plan where roaming in Canada is $0.59 per minute and any calls from the US to Canada are $0.19/minute while and text messages to the US are $0.50 per message. You can turn this plan on or off, so essentially, if you do more than 10 minutes of calling at the $2/minute roaming rate, it makes sense to sign up. Only draw back is Canadians have to pay international rates to call you, but it is your phone number.
2. According to GeckoBeach a prepaid account makes sense if ou are using 30-50 minutes of air time. The best plan for folks that are going to Whistler or skiing would be the Rogers prepaid SIM with $100 prepay card. That's because all the other cards expire after 30 days and you lose the number whereas the $100 card lasts for 365 days. So perfect for the once a year trips to Canada. The airtime charges are incredibly confusing, but they are $0.25 for first five minutes a day and then $0.15 there after for calls to Canadian numbers and $0.66/minute for calls to US phones. So that means you should get a prepaid if you are going to call way more to Canadian numbers, otherwise, using the AT&T Canada plan makes more sense. In all cases, either plan is better than the rack rate $2/minute roaming that is really highway robbery. the big benefit of course is that you have a local 604 number so you feel like a local :-)
3. Skype. Skype is the other way. If you pay $36, then you get free calling from your PC to any number in US and Canada and you get a $12 credit for calling to other cities. You also can get a SkypeIn number (so your PC has a phone number :-) for $36. A pretty good deal.
4. Maxroam. John pointed this one out to me. It is fantastic because you can have multiple phone numbers attached to the same SIM, so it solves the having a separate sim for a bunch of countries. It is $30 Euros and you get a phone number in the US and can add 50 numbers from China, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan. So for instance a call to the US is ).67 Euros or about $1, so it is more expensive. A call to Canada is about the same. So it is expensive but convenient.

For your data devices like a Blackberry or an iPhone:

1. BlackBerry International is $64/month that gives you unilimited email in 140 countries for $70/month. This is only worth it for folks who are there for a week or so as the email traffic really adds up.
2. iPhone Global Data. This is $25/month for 20MB of usage in 3 countries including Canada, China, Australia and Hong Kong and India and most of Europe.