I did some calculations on the cost difference between the cobbled-together solution I came up with for Canada data roaming vs. the Boost Infinite plan that replaces the Republic Wireless Everywhere You Go plan.
My assumptions on these numbers:
The Mint figure is what I pay for a year of Mint service in my market on the minimum plan.
The Boost Infinite figure is the EYG replacement figure of $39.99 multiplied by 12 to get an annual figure.
The Canada calls figure is based on an insanely high figure of 1 hour of calls on Mint cellular service. Realistically, in the absence of WiFi calling, I would use my Skype line if I had to use more than a few minutes of cellular calls on Mint, thus migrating the expense to the data block that I have already paid for. This would of course have no additional cost on the Boost Infinite EYG replacement plan.
The Manet eSIM profile cost is based on two trips to Canada of less than a week each, and going to two Geocaching events where there are known T-Mobile dead spots. Since I have learned that Manet eSIM profiles use all 3 major US carriers, I will only be completely stuck if there is no cell service in a location.
My apologies for the ugly formatting. The preview shows the editor messing with my attempts to make a neat table by eating extra spaces and tabs. I had to use leading dashes on the first line because leading underscores caused odd mixtures of bold and italic, and fixing alignments with underscores is less ugly than using dashes.
Numbers:
-----------------------Mint______Boost Infinite___Difference
Cost 1 Year_____$201.16___$479.88_______$278.72
1hr CanCalls____$3.60__________________-$3.60
4x Manet_______$20.80_________________-$20.80
Totals__________$225.56___$479.88_______$254.32
The upshot is that using Mint for voice calls and Manet eSIM profiles for Canadian Data roaming and for US data use where I know I’m going to have T-Mobile coverage issues saves me more that the total cost of the Mint/Manet solution compared to the cost of a year of Boost Infinite. I presently have an UpRoam balance of $16.86. This gives me a bit over four and a half hours of cellular call time. Realistically, that balance will probably last longer than Mint will.
Additionally, because the Manet eSIM profile uses all the major US networks, when at Geocaching events I’ll have data coverage in places that Boost Infinite will not. I’ve been in locations where Verizon was the only working signal.
Granted, Boost Infinite would be more convenient, but not $254.32 worth of convenient.