It was suggested I contact a L5 owner to find out if the L5 can be used in my area.
My area is western Canada, providers are Shaw or Telus.
Do you have a L5 and is it compatible with Shaw or Telus? Preferably Shaw.
Over and out,
S
1 Like
While you’re waiting for Canadian users to respond, you can take a look at these links and compare.
Librem 5 Modems & Frequencies (the current North American variant is the BM818-A1): https://puri.sm/faq/supported-networks/
I see that Shaw is a reseller of Freedom Mobile’s network.
Freedom Mobile’s frequencies: https://www.frequencycheck.com/carriers/freedom-mobile-canada?c_id=3155364
Telus’ frequencies: https://www.frequencycheck.com/carriers/telus-canada
The LTE frequencies (4G) are probably the most important ones, as 2G and 3G will be retired sooner or later.
I believe lower frequencies generally have better coverage inside buildings, and also travel farther, if I’m not mistaken.
(And I’m not sure how often frequencycheck.com updates their carrier info.)
1 Like
I don’t have my Librem 5 yet, but did my research to confirm that it would work with the Canadian carriers first before pre-ordering. The short answer is yes, it should work.
Shaw (& it’s subsidiary Freedom Mobile), have the least amount of licensed bands by a significant amount compared to Telus, and is the one I checked. You should double check for the others, and also for Shaw towers specifically in your area, but my reasoning at least was that if it works with them, it likely works with the other big carriers like Telus (Koodo/Public). Bell (Virgin/Lucky) share network equipment with Telus, and Rogers (Fido/Chatr) is on par with spectrum/deployment of these two. When you are in the National/Away zone with Shaw/Freedom, you use these networks, so you’ll likely have roaming coverage from the big 3, including in areas within the Home zone that may have less coverage than the big 3, like underground parking where they’ve deployed, but Shaw/Freedom hasn’t yet.
From what I remember when I checked, I found that the two modems both have 1 band that works with Shaw/Freedom. The Librem 5’s US modem is the best one to use.
I used online resources to confirm where they’ve deployed various spectrum, and also used an app on my Android phone to check which bands are available, which ones were the strongest, and confirmed (at least where I typically travel) that the strongest band available was typically the one in common with the US modem. This band is also simultaneously used for both 4G & 3G, so you should be able to place calls & browse the internet simultaneously when away from Wi-Fi.
One day when VoLTE is supported on the Librem 5, you’ll be able to do the same exclusively on 4G. Canadian carriers likely won’t retire 3G for awhile, as they only began shutting down their 2G towers this year, which have been in operation since the 90’s.
2 Likes