Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

arcticbull

Is it really though? I mean, it used to be.

Rogers wants $75/mth (CAD - $55 USD) for 10GB data and unlimited talk and text. Let's compare to the US:

- AT&T wants 65++ USD ($87 CAD) for a comparable plan.

- Verizon wants 70++ USD ($94 CAD) for a comparable plan.

- TMo wants 70 (all in) USD ($94 CAD) for a comparable plan.

And each network in Canada is dramatically better than AT&T and TMo, and roughly comparable to Verizon.

Back in the day, there was a huge difference, these days, it's kinda the same. I remember when the iPhone first came out and you could get an unlimited AT&T plan for $60/mth and Rogers wanted $120++. Those days are long past, though.

View on HN

You should read this [1]. "For years, Sweden-based tefficient’s annual reports on global wireless prices have been a headache for Canadian telcos, showing that our wireless providers make more money per user than telcos anywhere else."

So how do you make yourself look better. Do not provide the data for the report. Canada has been removed from the list. No longer the worst.

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/tefficient-canada-wirele...

I have 4 lines with TMobile and pay $140 a month.

https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/magenta

Unlimited everything... Even 5 gig of data when in Canada.

I don't think Rogers, Telus or Bell have anything close to that.

I was running the numbers based on a single line. Didn't bother doing the family plan options, but I do know the big3 in Canada have family plan options too. TMo is even in the US as huge outlier. I too enjoy a $40/mth unlimited plan with 5 of my favorite loose affiliates.

Not really family plans these days. Any additional lines are charged as normal and you just get the convenience of a single bill - no discount.

Or at least that's what the rogers rep told me.

Wat? T-Mobile wants US$35 (incl taxes!) for a much better plan. Includes Netflix even. And they only start throttling at 50gb.

https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans

The Canadian networks are “better” because every Canadian rations their usage. I’d wager that Canadian networks are wayyyy underprovisioned compared to even the crappiest US network.

That's if you want 4 lines.

Check out the top div on that page, you'll see they conveniently want to sign up both you and everyone you know to qualify for that rate. I priced it for a single line in both the US and Canada. With that in mind TMo is a huge outlier in the US, too, and John Legere is responsible for singlehandedly dragging AT&T and VZW kicking and screaming into the 21st century of pricing over the last 5-6 years.

They also have far and away the worst network in the US, trust me, I've used them for years -- and love them. Their network is still hot garbage though. Frankly the best TMobile network you can get is when you roam onto Rogers, Bell or Telus in Canada.

I would be curious about the underprovisioned thing... that's very possible. I travel to the US frequently (well before the world turned upside-down) and I would say in 8/10 US cities I visit I experience frustratingly worse cell coverage than I do at home. Slow speeds, call drops, etc. This isn't just on my personal phone but also on all of the cellular devices we bring with us. (we provide equipment for trade-shows, etc. and much of it runs 4G). I hadn't considered network provisioning as a possible cause of this.

Parent post has it backwards, the US networks are way underprovisioned, which is why they're just so darn slow -- well, that and Shannon's law. The Canadian networks are at minimum adequately provisioned.

I moved from an unremarkable city in Canada to San Francisco and the cellular service here is terrible. Only Verizon is comparable and even then that just means it is reliable. T-Mobile is a joke in SF.

Just wait until you try and use T-Mobile at Tacolicious -- or anywhere else -- in the Mission haha. You'll be lucky to get 1Mbit/sec no matter how many bars it shows.

Wow, in Belgium you can get the same for around 15 EUR and in Italy you can get 50 GB for less than 10 EUR...

Yes, the US is one of the highest priced mobile markets in the world, so it is not exactly fair to compare to them. The rest of the world pays far lower rates than the US and Canada.

And in Romania you get 50GB for 2 EUR (basically the plan is unlimited data, but with speed limited to 256kbps after 50GiB.). The speeds are quite good too, I personally reached 100Mbps on 4G on my phone in some places.

The 5G plan includes 80GB traffic for the same package.

++++++++++

I'm actually using this 2EUR plan as my main internet service at the moment, as I temporarily moved to the country side. I could get a 1Gbps FTTH connection for around 10 EUR per month ( or cheaper for lower bandwidth), but so far I decided not to bother.

50GB did last me for 20 days, with a lot of video content, some repos downloaded, arch package updates etc. The 256kbps limit I'm experiencing now is more than ok for anything text-based but YouTube only works seamlessly/without buffering in 240p.

A friend of mine is Romanian, and it is impressive how good their telecommunications are managed. This is something many countries can learn from.

Here in the UK, the government has grand ambitions, but it doesn't really materialise. Most people with "fibre" broadband are limited to 20-60Mbps. Although if you live in a major city you can get 200-300Mbps.The infrastructure is ancient, and by taking half measures they spend more in the long run for far less.

This is something that annoys me about 5G. It will cost a fortune to roll out (making data so expensive it won't be fully utilised). 4G on my phone right now is 35Mbps. 5G is more a tickbox exercise than bringing better connectivity to people.

</rant>

Connectivity was one of the major reasons I was looking at flats in Cluj a little while ago, even roaming on a UK SIM up in the mountains I was getting rock-solid 4G at all times (and even down in Salina Turda).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com