Horrific service, decades old technology (I'm still on 3G in Toronto), traffic quotas (low ones at that) and all options are rather expensive.
I had a quick look around, and in .SE you get about 40GB of mobile traffic for 90CAD. The same amount of money will get you 10GB of traffic at Bell in Canada.
The story is identical for residential broadband. It is truly an embarrassment.
I don't think this is a new story either. I remember as a child in the mid-90s, the rural public schools had high speed (for the time, at least) internet connections even back then. I have recollections of the same time period that Toronto schools were still trying to figure out how to get online at all, and were experimenting with dialup.
You even see this manifest in other areas. Like, it was only a year ago that it was big news that Toronto was soon going to be able to buy beer in grocery stores, which I found a bit funny. Rural Ontario has been able to buy a wide range of alcohol products in grocery stores since the 1960s.
I agree that the service it horrific and expensive compared to Europe. But why are you still on 3G when every major carrier offers LTE in Toronto? The technology isn't decades old -- in most public places LTE is just a bit slower than wifi.
That too, on just 2 phones that you HAVE to purchase from them and on newer sim cards that you have to pay for (over the monthly $40/6 GB cost).
[0] How non-Torontonians sarcastically refer to Toronto
I honestly can't wait for gigabit fiber to expand to outskirts like Ajax and Oshawa.
I've used Start.ca for a few years now and I've been very happy with the service.
Mobile is indeed quite awful, though.
So if you move in, you have to sign up with whoever signed that deal. And it's not like you get a discount or some kind of special service, you just lose the choice.
I found this out the hard way when I moved into my current place last fall. I was with Teksavvy (a relatively good 3rd party independent ISP) and when I called to schedule my move, they told me they couldn't service me in my new building, and I was forced to sign up with Rogers (who provide good service, but it's more expensive).
Now I know this is a thing (and I found out it's quite common), so I'll be more careful next time, but I bet a lot of people don't know (or care), so this is yet another way that the big telcos are doing everything they can to undermine customer choice in Canada.
These days, that sort of thing has got to affect sale/resale value to a small, but still noticeable extent. If it doesn't, it should. That should help to discourage those arrangements in the long run.
They just launched LTE. But mostly in Hamilton and only on the utterly useless frequency band 62, which is not supported be any mainstream phone.