Cheaper phone plans for Canadians could be closer than we think.
On Monday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that it’s reached a significant milestone in increasing phone services competition in Canada.
While the CRTC’s announcement about cheaper phone plans is promising, I’ll reserve my belief until I see these cost-effective options firsthand. I prefer to adopt a ‘seeing is believing’ approach and await the actual unveiling of these plans to gauge any tangible positive changes.
I’m never going to leave the $15 public mobile plan. I have a travel app that let’s me download e-sims for data, if I need it.
Let me start by saying I got a euro esim from the app and some sites like home depot block access.
dent is the app. They have a market place to buy data from people or you can buy it from them.
The sim is good in a lot of countries, like going to the USA you can still use data… Their price is $10USD for 1GB good for 365 days and goes up to $90 USD for 10GB that’s good for 365 days. Its cheaper in their market place.
They let you collect free dent daily and get 50MB free every 5 days. I don’t use much data and I can usually spend the free dent I earn daily on data every couple months.
It’s reality already. Just look at Freedom’s $45+ plans. No more zones. The data bucket is nationwide. We might see more players as time goes on but this is already a result of this policy.
When I moved from Vancouver to London, loads of things shocked me, one of the ones that hit me hardest was the cost of phone plans here compared to back home. I can’t remember who I was with, mobilicity or wind or some such, I was paying basically $50/month, I got 15gb of data and unlimited calling. Except it was 3G, borderline 2G data. When I moved to the UK I got unlimited data (actually 4G) and unlimited calls/texts for £10/month
Data is still horrible in Canada. Noone is texting hundreds SMS per month nor using 1000 minutes per month, so those are free unlimited but damn data… it’s still expensive.
Koodo has been decent, I’m at 75Gig for $55, with free unlimited calling to 28 countries . (pick a perk) Also, not sure not sure what you mean about no one is texting nor using 1000 minutes per month?
I text 0 characters a month and use 0 minutes.
It’s all Skype, fbmsgr, hangouts.
Because it’s 2023.
I was in Spain last June. Took a pre-paid SIM for the duration of the stay:
-50GB of data. I shared the connection all the time with 2 other devices, no issue, no warning. -Unlimited calls through all of Europe -30mins calls international (inc. back to Canada} -15€ tax included, that’s ~21CAD -valid 1month -10€ to top up or extend, since I already had the SIM
We’re getting milked here!!
They keep saying it’s because of the size of the country here, but they fail to mention that Australia which has lower population density than we have has way lower prices. They also fail to mention that that the federal government pays them billions to install the equipment in remote areas… Yeah
Why don’t we just have a state owned telecommunications provider? It works so well in Quebec with the electricity, some of the lowest prices in the world!
Fuck, I just got back from NZ and it was $88 for a SIM, 60 days unlimited calling, 100GB data, and 250 minutes to a big list of countries (incl Canada).And they’re working on using Starlink to improve the network in the South Island so they have less impact from towers in the mountains
Canadian telcos have the highest ARPU in the world, it’s ridiculous. The telephone/internet/cell towers should be run by a crown corp and the telcos pay into it. We fucked up privatizing, but that seems to be the status quo
Exactly! And if you don’t like the idea of having a state-owned telco, we could leave the infrastructure only to the state-owned company, and open access to all incumbents, same rate for everyone. While we’re there, we should just have the same with broadband: a state owned company deploys fiber. All ISP access it at the same rate.
No more complaining they need to make hundreds of % of margin otherwise they can’t invest, and even then they can’t invest if the government doesn’t heavily subsidize the network.
You said it man. The prices in Canada are fuckin criminal. And every time the government tries to rein in the Big Three, they go:
Oh, nooooooononono, you can’t restrict us, we’d have to do massive layoffs, and youuuuu wouldn’t want thaaaaaat would you?
It’s a goddamn joke.
the CRTC seems to be a little bit better without that corrupt pos that had a secret meeting with Bell’s CEO in a bar. Still not completely confident this will have a very significant effect on the prices. We just need basic plans for less than 20$ ffs. I don’t need 60GB for 60$, I need 5GB for 20$.
Currently I use a 4GB data only tablet plan on my phone, its against their TOS but they can fuck themselves. I pay 21$ taxes in for my data and phone with a separate app (15$+3,60$). Until I can get that value without using weird workarounds, I won’t be happy. I don’t care about “ooga booga 0.1$/GB plan” but that forces me to get way too much. Even fizz is the same price as the others now
My work plan is 50GB high speed, unlimited data, unlimited call/text North America.
For $45.
They can offer these plans, thet just won’t.
We fought with Bell to get a similar deal for our “corporate” (our small business + friends/family) plan. Ours is 20GB/ea on 5G, but it’s pooled so we can support a few heavy users.
Bell making their wifi calling only available within Canada is the latest stupid thing I found. Otherwise I think we wrapped up most of the other extras.
They clearly will. Assuming you are not lying, your claim is demonstrative of it.
They just don’t usually have to because most people are more than happy give up more. If someone is begging to pay you $80 per month, why would you only charge them $45?
They won’t, those plans are exclusive for business users. I worked as a loyalty rep for Bell so I got to see all of the disgusting prices business-class people pay.
There are better plans you can get as ‘retention plans’ per say, but you have to really milk the system i.e, bitch to your rep until they cave and they’re not nearly as good as business class plans. But anythings better if you can get it tbh.
Also, no one is begging to pay $80. These are all hidden plans. If anything, the average customer is getting scammed.
Canada is WAY WAY BEHIND in the MVNO game. It is RIDICULOUS that it’s taken THIS LONG for CRTC to implement what is already common everywhere else in the world. Honestly, CRTC is there to protect the telecom monopolies, NOT the Canadian consumers.
I’ll believe it when I see my bill get lowered.
