FIDO SHINES IN USA TEST

By Harold Merton

In the past, some cellular companies required you to call a special number when you were leaving Canada to have the system "follow you" as you ventured into the U.S.A.

Some Canadian cellular users also found that when they went to use their phones in the U.S.A. they were switched to an operator or automated system that required them to supply a current credit card to charge access fees and calls to when placed in that specific area. Many U.S. cellular services charged a per day access fee that was not appropriate to a Canadian RVer just travelling through that particular State on their way to the sunny south or some other U.S. destination.

One could easily pass through several of these service areas while on a day's drive, racking up a lot in daily access fees.

At best it was not acceptable and became a real problem for many RV cellular phone users.

We have been testing the Fido system for the past several months and during that time we had to make an sudden trip into the Ohio/Indiana/Kentucky border area for a relative's funeral.

Fido advertises that they can find your cell phone if you are in any of the digital cellular service areas of associated U.S. telephone companies that provide digital cellular service where you might travel.

On many occasions during our trip our phone rang with a call from our home city. We also have Fido's message service, so calls placed to us at a time when we either had the phone turned off or were outside an associate company's service area, went to our message service.

Once we drove into an area served by a U.S. associate company digital cellular service, our phone beeped indicating that we had messages. Fido found us.

A simple call then to our message service at Fido headquarters in Canada let us access those messages and return the calls.

Many times calls from Canada came right through with family and business associates having no prior knowledge as to where we were.

Our destination city of Evansville, Indiana, unfortunately was not one of those cities that Fido had a digital service relationship in place, but as soon as we drove out of that area we would get messages and calls.

It appears that for an RVer travelling to a U.S. destination, Fido would work well. If there was no reciprocal service in the spot where they were at the time of the call, their phone message service would pick it up when they did drive into an associated digital service area. Communications at all times we used it were extremely good quality.

Fido's charges for calls in the U.S.A. to anywhere in the U.S.A. or Canada are 30 cents (US$) per minute with no additional daily service fee.

We were extremely pleased with the Fido system when we made this trip and found Fido's U.S. service to be the best that we have used to date.

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