Planning to drive up the Western side of the US, into Canada this year. Possibly amble on up to Alaska (?).
Anyone have experience with Directv, or Verizon cel phone, or Verizon air-card broadband service when traveling into Canada, Alaska?

Took a cruise last year and discovered because Canada is a foreign country you get zapped with roaming charges. Might be cheaper to buy a Canadian throwaway system like track phone. Another option is to take a look at Vontage. The only problem with Vontage is you will need to have WiFi connectivity.

DirecTV will work anyplace you can see the sat. You may need to lay the antenna down hoz to pick it up way north. On cell phone service you can add on Canada to most US cell systems. They may let you do a add on for couple months. Call your cell people and see if this is possible. If not change to a new company. On Verizon air-card, that may be a trick to get working in Canada. The US is not on line at all cell towers yet with air cards. We are working on it before some new system comes out to take its place.

Be sure to add Canada before you leave the US. We had friends who did not and they were not able to use their phones the whole time they were gone.

Good point about pointing the TV dish horizontal... ha!
Yep...appears from Verizon website we can incorporate international calling (just add money).

Will have to wing-it with the air-card. Something tells me when we're close to the US/Canada border reception will be easier.

Thank you.

We recently ran into that issue, and we were only "close" to Canada... I have an iPhone, so we're using the internet, phone, etc... all from a British Colombia tower (which is no where near Niagara Falls NY last time I looked at a map!!)

Still waiting on ATT to decide if they're going to refund the $270 in data roaming charges