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Verizon’s price drops by 50% once you get to 4 lines. You won’t find that in Canada.

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...

I'll add that I am on T-mobile living in Canada and have been for 6 months and haven't switched over because all in we have two people @ $100, 24 gb data, unlimited can, us, mexico, and all sorts of other random data perks. The quality of the service has been great for the most part. No penalty fees for being in the US or in Canada - except any Canadian people calling us or texting us get charged since it's international (ridiculous). Technically we're supposed to be kicked off our plan but we keep returning to the US to keep our plan alive (and for business, etc). Not saying it's amazing - but way better than the Canadian telco plans we've seen.

1. You will have better coverage with T-Mobile than with any Canadian plan because T-Mob has roaming agreements with all of our "competitors".

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 :)

Also - aren't the roaming agreements mean we get the lower tranch of quality connections / data? I always figured they would choose their own customers over roaming customers.

Thanks for the pro tips. Do you find the connection time is a bit slower as my assumption is the network is trying to figure out where I am / get handshakes from telcos.

I just moved from Quebec to the UK.

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.

10 GBP for a phone plan is insanely low. I don't know how it is in Europe, but in the US it's definitely nowhere as cheap, which is the comment the person above was making. I too was in California, and I pay 40USD for everything + 2GB of data. In Quebec, I'm not sure if I got a special deal, but I got 55CAD for 9GB of data, which with conversion ratio is roughly 40USD.

This sort of pricing is normal for Europe. We even have free roaming in all of the EU now. North America just has extortionate pricing.

> 10 GBP for a phone plan is insanely low.

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.

> 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 think it had more to do with cheap calls to various countries.

I just wish free.fr would mail me a SIM.

In Sweden, 200GB including free calls and texts, unused data rolls over up too 100 gb for $30.

https://www.hallon.se/

Similar here, from Quebec but worked in Milan for a while. I got prepaid plans in Milan for the equivalent of $29 CAD for 80GB of mobile data. It reminded me of how fucked up the market is back home.

The problem is that you're comparing two corrupt markets. You're absolutely right, it's not much better in the US: Behemoth providers making absurd profits not based on any kind of free market with the money to afford the lobbying and advertising to keep it that way.

One of the providers[0] in Sweden: 8 GB data - $7.52, 25 GB - $12.6. $17.6 for 100 GB. All accounts carry over unused data up to 100 GB indefinitely. 13 GB data anywhere in EU/EES.

[0] https://www.hallon.se/mobiltelefoni

Tele2 Sweden "Unlimited" - 50 GB/day @ $50/month. Works very well as a replacement for FTTH in rural areas.

But the prices in e.g France, eastern Europe and Taiwan all put us to shame.

UK is probably the cheapest market relative to GDP per capita. Three offers unlimited data, calls, texts and roaming with no throttling including 5G for £17/month.

Actual competition is a hell of a thing. I'm pretty sure there are some backroom price fixing agreements between the Swedish operators, the profit margins wouldn't hover around 30-40% if there wasn't.

There were some dawn raids on these companies last year by EU antitrust authorities, but they didn't find any actionable evidence. :/

The US/Canada prices are usually justified by low population density and high cost of living.

But, uh, Sweden has a higher cost of living, and a lower population density.

Huh? That doesn't sound right, so I googled it.

Sweden has a population density of 23 people per square kilometer, Canada has a population density of 4 people per square kilometer.

My bell plan is 95 CAD and gives 4GB/mo so I’m not sure where your numbers came from. I must have missed that deal

That’s a terrible plan, you should definitely shop around. I’m paying $50 CAD for “Unlimited” (8GB before throttling) with Freedom.

The problem with Freedom is that their network is tiny, but even Telus and Rogers are both offering 10GB for $75 right now.

The problem with Freedom is there network isn't good enough so people try them and go back to one of the others that has coverage where they travel.

In my experience Freedom is just fine if you live in a city with good coverage and don't plan on spending much any time travelling through areas they don't serve. But if you travel much locally it's a non-starter.

In my experience, friends don't get signal in lecture halls in downtown Toronto on Freedom

Huh, I haven't had any signal problems like that, but I'm not in Toronto, so I don't know what the network's like there.

$50 CAD = $38 USD, $75 CAD = $56 USD.

(In the interest of keeping numbers in a format we can all compare and relate to).

wut...does the CEO come to your house and shine your shoes too? One local provider in my country does 6GB for 12CAD (equivalent), and they have great coverage...I think most unlimited plans are actually cheaper here.

I would invest in a carrier pigeon or something at that price. Sending tasty memes by pigeon...the future is now.

> does the CEO come to your house and shine your shoes too?

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.

> 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.

I’m not even really upset about what I’m paying, just that it only buys me 4gb and getting 10 would cost another $15-20 per month + tax.

And US/international roaming... is so high that I just go without or buy a local SIM.

> 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.

UK, we have a lot of MVNOs, and (I believe) it is required for owners of physical networks to provide access to MVNOs (I believe this isn't the case in Canada). We have a problem with investment but prices are good.

Depends on province. Freedom is creating some competition, hopefully they don’t get crushed.

I used to use freedom. My wife used to say it was short for “freedom from service.” There were a lot of dead zones in the town I lived and it was useless on road trips.

Good prices and terms at least

They're better than they were: They've got 700MHz spectrum so they can actually penetrate in a building. And they usually include a gb or 2 on Rogers' network.

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.

> And they usually include a gb or 2 on Rogers' network.

Is it a relatively new thing?

PS. I used to be a customer but switched away because of their very limited coverage.

Maybe. Keeping track of cell phone deals is a full-time job.

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 :)

Surely Freedom has a pay as you go / monthly plan that you could try?

They do, but I’d want to test with more than a couple gb. So I’m looking at $70 to do a month’s test.

I linked my sources, and I didn't shop around at all to find numbers I just used the first ones Google pointed me at. I wouldn't put it past bell to be providing me numbers based on geolocation though.

I would point out that 95 CAD is 71 USD though, so you're paying about the same as the verizon line I linked.

> Remember to convert CAD to USD

Absolutely not. We aren't importing data from the US. You can't tie exchange rate to CoL.

So what, you'd say we have "the cheapest cell service in the world" if we took our currency and reissued it with 1000 pre-2020 dollar equaling 1 post-2020 dollar [0]?

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...