Wind Mobile European roaming review: good value, but doesn’t include calls to the USA!

First published on October 25, 2012

Wind Mobile has the cheapest European roaming plan of any Canadian carrier. You have to activate this plan and it costs $8 per month.

With the plan, you do not get any prepaid minutes, but you get a rate of 20 cents per minute for incoming calls, outgoing calls within Europe, and outgoing calls to Canada. This is compared to the regular rate between $1 and $3.50 per minute, so if you plan on making more than 10 minutes of calls while in Europe, it is worth using.

For texting, the rate is 15 cents per outgoing text instead of 50 cents. For data, this is $1/mb instead of $5/mb.

You can add this plan online to your account, but you have to call Wind customer service to cancel it. You can cancel it at any time, so if could be active for only 1 month if needed.

You keep your Canadian phone number, so if anybody in Europe needs to call you, it is long distance for them (although you can just have them ring a couple of times and then have you call them back).

If you have a SIM card older than June 2012, you have to go to the store to swap it for a new SIM card. Before you do this, make sure you move all of your contacts and other relevant data off your SIM card onto your phone so that you don’t lose them when the SIM is swapped!

One extra note: if you need to make calls to the US while in Europe, the roaming plan does not make such calls any cheaper. The rate is $3.50 per minute, so have them call you, or use a calling card or something like Skype To Go or VoIP if possible!

This entry is filed under Telephony, Travelling and written by Peter Keung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

11 Responses to “Wind Mobile European roaming review: good value, but doesn’t include calls to the USA!”

August 16th, 2013 at 1:53 pm
christophe says:

All nice and well, but it doesn’t work. I am Belgium right now. I can see three networks on my phone, and I can’t register on any of them. I contacted Wind, and after three days, they came back with: take the battery out of the phone, put it back, and reboot.

My phone doesn’t have a removable battery.

This is not a reliable service. Avoid Euro roaming with Wind.

Reply from Peter: Sorry to hear! If you have a network setting “Use 2G networks only” try checking that. My friend had a similar problem when roaming in Quebec and that fixed the problem.
August 29th, 2013 at 3:33 pm
Lisa says:

I’m in Berlin right now and it also isn’t working. I can’t answer calls and can’t seem to make them. Very bad choice.
September 2nd, 2013 at 3:10 pm
Lisa says:

As a follow-up, I heard from Wind a day or two later and was told to pull out the battery and card, and hard reset (already tried before my email). Then I was given a number to call, which is not what I wanted to bother with on a pay phone. I read somewhere online that my phone model may have to be unlocked to work here. I tried to buy an unlock code online but was unable to use my Paypal account within Germany. I was also unable to find a place to unlock it in Berlin. I could get some data and text, but my friend got a local SIM card and could not text me back. The point of getting the package was to make calls and receive them – which I was unable to do on any network I tried. My LG phone has the right frequencies.
September 21st, 2013 at 1:24 am
Fernando says:

I have a Samsung Galaxy SIII with the new SIM card (confirmed last year and this year in a Wind Mobile store I visited before my trips) I was in France and Spain last year, I was in Zurich two days ago and I am in Venice right now. In every country I removed the battery, played with the phone settings and tried each discovered mobile network manually with no success. Unless my SIM card is not the right one, Wind Mobile roaming does not work in Europe.
November 5th, 2013 at 8:39 am
Frank says:

I couldn’t roam with Wind Canada in Greece either. I was using an unlocked phone and the newer Wind SIM card with the European Roaming plan activated. I couldn’t even see the networks, let alone connect to them. I fiddled with all the phone settings, tried cold starts without the battery, etc. Nothing. (Of course my relatives with their Rogers plans were able to connect right away…)

The most annoying part is that there is a Wind company in Greece, and even this was not available for me. Wind Canada just doesn’t seem to roam in Europe.
April 22nd, 2014 at 4:09 pm
william says:

Here is my story, I did buy this plan twice. At first I thought I made a mistake. The first time I was in Czech, Hungary, Austria, Turkey, France, Belgium and Germany. It did not work anywhere. Second time 4 months ago, I tried to connect in Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland and Denmark. Here is that happened, I suddenly got a signal in the middle of the Baltic sea on my way from Finland to Estonia. It loaded my messages and notified the connection in Estonia, but that’s it. No luck after that. Well, I tried all tricks in every other place I have been. It’s just waste of money. I later demanded Wind to refund my money, which I failed to do first time. Will never add this plan again.
May 9th, 2014 at 10:32 am
Fred says:

I’m in Germany now, and after many attempts, (yes new SIM card before I left Canada) and resets, no connection! This doesn’t work! I get replies from WIND but no real help…so far.
September 14th, 2014 at 3:01 am
Sylvain says:

2 monthsback, I got the US roaming plan before leaving Canada. Got to Vegas and nothing was working. I was seeing the networks but couldn’t connect. I called Wind once back in Canada and they refounded me.

I took the European plan before leaving for France today. Same thing. I see the networks but i can’t connect to them.

Very disappointing. …
September 12th, 2015 at 1:45 pm
Kelly says:

My wife is in Scotland as I write this. She is unable to make outbound long distance calls while in Scotland, using a Wind SIM + Nokia 1020 mobile phone with International roaming add-on. Inbound calls work, SMS works both ways, and Data works. After multiple calls to Wind, and getting escalated to Level 2 tech support each time, the "answer" was to have her call them from Scotland. The logic of this statement made me exasperated. "If she could call Canada, from Scotland, we would not have a problem, now would we?"
In short, Wind phones/SIM cards should not be your only connection when travelling Europe. I will use my dual SIM phone next time I travel, and pick up a local pre-paid SIM to be safe.
June 27th, 2016 at 12:07 am
Kewl Dude says:

For all those struggling to connect on roaming in Europe, change settings to 2G for voice and data and it will connect.
October 23rd, 2016 at 8:20 am
Bruce M says:

I had the same experience. It didn’t work at all in Europe. Very frustrating. I’m going again in a few days but I don’t think I will try this again. I don’t see anyone on this thread having a positive experience! If WIND didn’t have the best deal for free calls to the states I would have dropped them long ago. It drops loads of calls here in Canada too.