Cheaper phone plans for Canadians could be closer than we think.
On Monday, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that it’s reached a significant milestone in increasing phone services competition in Canada.
While the CRTC’s announcement about cheaper phone plans is promising, I’ll reserve my belief until I see these cost-effective options firsthand. I prefer to adopt a ‘seeing is believing’ approach and await the actual unveiling of these plans to gauge any tangible positive changes.
I’m never going to leave the $15 public mobile plan. I have a travel app that let’s me download e-sims for data, if I need it.
me too, but do tell about this e-sim app 😮
Let me start by saying I got a euro esim from the app and some sites like home depot block access.
dent is the app. They have a market place to buy data from people or you can buy it from them.
The sim is good in a lot of countries, like going to the USA you can still use data… Their price is $10USD for 1GB good for 365 days and goes up to $90 USD for 10GB that’s good for 365 days. Its cheaper in their market place.
They let you collect free dent daily and get 50MB free every 5 days. I don’t use much data and I can usually spend the free dent I earn daily on data every couple months.
It’s reality already. Just look at Freedom’s $45+ plans. No more zones. The data bucket is nationwide. We might see more players as time goes on but this is already a result of this policy.
I tried to signup for Freedom but I could not retain my existing phone number since they didn’t offer services in my former area code. Hopefully this changes that, but yeah not holding my breath!
When I moved from Vancouver to London, loads of things shocked me, one of the ones that hit me hardest was the cost of phone plans here compared to back home. I can’t remember who I was with, mobilicity or wind or some such, I was paying basically $50/month, I got 15gb of data and unlimited calling. Except it was 3G, borderline 2G data. When I moved to the UK I got unlimited data (actually 4G) and unlimited calls/texts for £10/month
Data is still horrible in Canada. Noone is texting hundreds SMS per month nor using 1000 minutes per month, so those are free unlimited but damn data… it’s still expensive.
Koodo has been decent, I’m at 75Gig for $55, with free unlimited calling to 28 countries . (pick a perk) Also, not sure not sure what you mean about no one is texting nor using 1000 minutes per month?
I text 0 characters a month and use 0 minutes.
It’s all Skype, fbmsgr, hangouts.
Because it’s 2023.
I’ve never thought of using Skype as being modern. Maybe Discord, Matrix, Teams, Whatsapp…
Urbanite spotted.
Sometimes I wonder if people in cities have no idea the digital divide exists.
Texting and calling via a cellphone network is a far more reliable where I live, and even at that, there are known dead zones along my road (a main road) where calls drop, and texts either don’t send or a painfully slow.
Hangouts in 2023?
Well not sure why you have downvotes, but for me its also used as work phone so texts via sms and regular phone calls are a thing because you can’t control customer app choices or device choices, so a standard sms or phonecall is required.
Canada is WAY WAY BEHIND in the MVNO game. It is RIDICULOUS that it’s taken THIS LONG for CRTC to implement what is already common everywhere else in the world. Honestly, CRTC is there to protect the telecom monopolies, NOT the Canadian consumers.
I’ll believe it when I see my bill get lowered.
Inb4 they put $5 back in one pocket and take $10 from your other pocket
What a joke, eh. Spinning it as helping Canadians. Where was the Canadian Competition Bureau when they allowed 3 companies to own the entire cellular network in a country second only in size to Russia?
CRTC is helping nothing.
What does size have to do with anything? We are a tiny country population wise.
Global warming-related migrants: “Hold our beer.”
Great news. The same should apply to internet rates as well. There is a problem when my ISP charges me almost as most as what I pay to insure my single family dwelling
Is that a problem? I’m not saying that we all wouldn’t like lower bills, but is comparing your internet bill to your insurance premium a pragmatic way to approach finance? Also, how much are you giving your ISP every month? You can get a gigabit fibre connection for $100 or less.
You’re conditioned to think $100 is good.
I think that depends on quality. A gigabit fibre connection is pretty damn good. Far faster than most households need by a good magnitude. And the fact that most places offer such a thing for under $100 is pretty decent.
The real question is how much does it cost to get a 10mBit connection. It’s been a while since I’ve checked, but I’m pretty sure that it’s also pretty close to $100, which is definitely a problem.
I’m my area, cable internet goes for about 13$/Mbps.
I don’t know about fiber. The only provider is Bell and I hate them and will never give them my money again.
Bell is usually the only provider for fibre, as it usually replaces DSL and Rogers uses cable. Most of the time the starting price I’ve seen is about $100, but that’s for a gigabit minimum.
On the other hand, $13?! I’ve never seen any sort of internet connection going for so cheap in the entire country!
I’m in Montréal and I’m using Teksavvy as a provider. That’s the price they offer.
I think having Vidéotron as a local competitor helps with prices.
Wow. I’m on Teksavvy as well, but I don’t think they offer anything near that price in Toronto. Just goes to show that competition means a ton.
The fact that there is no company advertising starting a new cell phone company in Canada after this announcement is all you need to know how significant this announcement is. It’s why the original founder of Wind/Freedom mobile pulled out of Canada and no American company bothered to look north since AT&T left.
Does anyone know of a Canadian provider that offers an IOT data plan for multiple SIMs that share the data pool? I have a pile of telemetry devices I’d like to move to LTE with minor data needs per month each, but I need a low monthly cost per device with a shared data pool of like 5GB.
So like, a regular family plan?
Have you looked at https://www.hologram.io?
I haven’t used them yet, but a business associate does for his IOT deployments, and he’s pretty happy with them.
I had ordered a SIM from them, then threw it in the drawer and promptly forgot about it. I’m going to see if I can find that again, thanks for the reminder.
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