Internet options onboard a yacht

You need to roam if you're traveling.

Capt. J, it's all along the border. I got slammed in Alex Bay NY, the Welland Canal, Erie PA, Michigan, etc., etc. Yes thankfully a call generally resolves the matter, but with Verizon that's an hour or two of your life every month that you'll never get back. Thankfully with my phone it was only a couple hundred each time, but with a connected boat (security system, cameras, Wifi, etc.) OMG!

I guess Canada would not be international roaming then. Interesting.

Similar situation in the Virgin Islands. A few years back I Captained a boat we kept in St Thomas, Boss had a house on St John, both USVI territories and cellular service was just as if we were in the continental U.S.

The tower that served St John was just across the bay in St Thomas. So far, so good. Beware as soon as you get on the north side of St John, even on land, as the tower with the best reception was on Tortola and would immediately connect you to the BVI cell company and you wouldn't know it. Boy did they like to see us coming! We went from unlimited talk time to $3/minute.

This was several years back, before it was so easy to buy pre-paid SIM cards and such, but it was a lesson I'll never forget. The Boss paid our phone bill for the first month but made it clear it was our responsibility going forward.

Set your phone to NOT roam when in doubt . . .

ROCK

The best bet would be to rely on two cell services. I would probably pick a large AT&T data plan for the lager service area as well as the international comparability with the bands. I'd also pick up T-Mobile with their unlimited plan. I'd pick up a large screen device with T-Mobile, such as an iPhone 6+, or a Samsung Galaxy Mega and predominately use that for you browsing/other data uses. Even downloading movies/files to that device and then transferring it to a device with a larger screen. Doing so, you get to leverage the unlimited data with only potential throttling past 21GB per month and only on congested towers.