For us living in Canada, we know we pay more than anyone else. And we're constantly reminded of how the Bell, Telus and Rogers mafia keeps it that way.
I was in California for this summer - I paid about the same for a cell service there as I do here...
All numbers in USD.
For a quick comparison of "premium" cell providers, an unlimited (15gb before throttling) verizon wireless line is $70 per month [0]. A comparable Canadian plan for Bell is $56 per month for 10gb before throttling, or $71 per month for 20 gb before throttling.
Most people don't pay that much in reality, because of group discounts and so on, but that applies in both cases.
The story is similar if we look at budget cell phone providers. Google Fi (US) provides unlimited talk and text for $20gb/month with data for $10gb/month. Freedom mobile (Canada) doesn't provide as much flexibility, and you have to select your amount of data up front, but for any amount of data it's cheaper. E.g. for 2gb it's $30/month instead of $40. [2]
[0] https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/ - change the number of lines to 1, this is 15gb data before throttling per their faq https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/verizon-plan-unlimit...
[1] Remember to convert CAD to USD https://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Unlimited-plan...
[2] Click on "Freedom Plans" here, remember to convert CAD to USD https://www.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans
Good prices and terms at least
I'm actually tempted to switch, but already on an okay plan from Public where I've learned to ration.
Just wish Freedom sold a trial plan or something for a month so I could see what it's like living with them. Paying $50 + $10 SIM + taxes discourages me.
Is it a relatively new thing?
PS. I used to be a customer but switched away because of their very limited coverage.
Meanwhile, residents of other countries just go to the mall, walk out with a plan that'll meet their needs and improves every year, and doesn't think about it again :)
I would invest in a carrier pigeon or something at that price. Sending tasty memes by pigeon...the future is now.
No, they buy major-league sports teams with the extra money.
What do your telecom providers do? Just provide telecom services?
What would you say if your PM/president candidates said they'll cut your cell phone bill if they get re-elected?
Ours just did. We only laugh because we don't believe them, not because it's a problem.
Yeah, to be believable it would need to be a explicit promise to significantly and permanently reduce the revenue of BCE Inc. - and that kind of promise would have BCE shareholders in an uproar.
As far as I can tell, they don't seem too concerned.
And US/international roaming... is so high that I just go without or buy a local SIM.
I've found trying to function internationally without my normal SIM to be essentially unworkable due to losing my ability to receive 2FA SMS codes, and since moving from the Lumia to the Pixel line-up, the phones I use no longer have dual-SIM capabilities.
The problem with Freedom is that their network is tiny, but even Telus and Rogers are both offering 10GB for $75 right now.
(In the interest of keeping numbers in a format we can all compare and relate to).
I would point out that 95 CAD is 71 USD though, so you're paying about the same as the verizon line I linked.
And once you hit 15gb, you’re still getting 600kbps.
Freedom limits you to 256 (or 128 outside their limited footprint) once you go over.
T-mobile’s $40/month plans (if you can string in 4 friends/family) will have unlim streaming video, 5gb of roaming in Canada, an SD Netflix subscription, 1 hour of in-flight wifi and start throttling you at 50gb.
edit: That's $40 with taxes and fees included. They advertise it that way!
Each of the above are unthinkable in Canada. We choose phone plans based on their restrictions, not their extras.
I know, population density and all, but compare to Australia, Russia or Iceland, and Canadians are still getting hosed.
Don't even get me started on France. Going in a month and will soon order a SIM card. And the provider will mail anywhere in France at no charge...
2. Through Voip.ms, you could setup a local Canadian number and give that out to people to call you. It'll cost you a dollar a month and about 1cent/minute for forwarding the calls.
I have one that goes straight to their voicemail-to-email gateway for calls I never want to answer :)
But the prices in e.g France, eastern Europe and Taiwan all put us to shame.
There were some dawn raids on these companies last year by EU antitrust authorities, but they didn't find any actionable evidence. :/
But, uh, Sweden has a higher cost of living, and a lower population density.
Sweden has a population density of 23 people per square kilometer, Canada has a population density of 4 people per square kilometer.
For a plan with exactly the same conditions and data amount, I am paying 10 GBP = 16.43 CAD instead of 46 CAD after tax. And that was a competitively priced plan in Quebec.
Telco in Canada is embarrassing.
That's the thing: A luxury plan in Canada is a basic plan overseas.
When I visit France and buy a 10 EUR plan that's "Good for a Canadian" for my 1-2 week stay from a random provider, people look at me funny because the brand is associated with the unemployed and refugees.
Come on. There is no provider associated with the unemployed and refugees in France. 10€ pre-paid should get you unlimited call and texts and something like 1Go of data and no one will bat an eye.
Plans are actually quite cheap too. I pay 15€ for unlimited everything and you can get as low as 2€ for 2h of call, unlimited texts and 50Mo of data.
I just wish free.fr would mail me a SIM.
Absolutely not. We aren't importing data from the US. You can't tie exchange rate to CoL.
Electronics cost the same amount regardless of what currency you buy them in, which is at least a good portion of the cost of running a cell company. Wages are also similar in the US and Canada.
The Canadian GDP per person is slightly greater than the American GDP per person after we convert everything to the same asset (e.g. USD) [1]. So it's not like we are poorer than americans and we need to adjust for that. It just happens to be the case that a loonie is less than a dollar bill, and a toonie more than a dollar bill.
[0] There is precedent for doing this, though not in Canada, typically it is done after hyper inflation to make amounts of currency seem more reasonable.
[1] https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&m...
He said something that no Canadian ever says in this situation: “Go wild, it’s unlimited”.