It’s 2010 and Canadians pay the highest cell phone bills in the world

Having lived in the US for many years and then returning to Canada recently, it is absolutely stunning how few people here have cell phones. The primary reason is in the US, nation-wide plans are standard, whereas in Canada they simply do not exist. So you pay long distance for calling from one small city to another small city which drives the price of cell phones through the roof. Even if someone does own a cell phone, there is stigma attached to using it -- "can I call you back on a landline..." sounds ridiculously archaic in 2010.

The top iPhone plan ($100/mo) includes 500 local minutes: http://mobilebusiness.bell.ca/rate-plans/combo-plans-for-iph...

Here's the competition ($80 for 400 min.): http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_page...

The Canadian telecommunication industry is a cartel by any definition.

On a similar tangent, I'm actually travelling to the states for PAX coming up next week, and I tried to get something set up for roaming data with my carrier, Virgin:

http://www.danhulton.com/blog/2010/08/26/mitigating-exhorbit...

The short of it is, I have to pay $6 per MEGABYTE of roaming data I accrue, even if it's on Viring US's network. And I'm LUCKY. If I didn't have a smartphone, I could be paying $15 for the first megabyte, and $0.05 per KILOBYTE thereafter.