[JamesK]

There was an interesting episode of Marketplace this week, about the cost of cell phone plans. After watching that, I am happy with my deal with Rogers, where my current bill is $54.29 for unlimited Canada wide calling & texts, unlimited data, throttled after 35 GB and 5G. The savings they were coming up with is much more than I pay. One thing this illustrates is people have to pay attention to what they're getting and pay for. it. I occasionally call up Rogers, to see what they can do for me.

 

[tvmaster]

There was an interesting episode of Marketplace this week, about the cost of cell phone plans. After watching that, I am happy with my deal with Rogers, where my current bill is $54.29 for unlimited Canada wide calling & texts, unlimited data, throttled after 35 GB and 5G. The savings they were coming up with is much more than I pay. One thing this illustrates is people have to pay attention to what they're getting and pay for. it. I occasionally call up Rogers, to see what they can do for me.

What does Ryan Reynolds charge people in the U.S. for one month, $15?

 

[JamesK]

What does Ryan Reynolds charge people in the U.S. for one month, $15?

You can't go by price alone. You also have to compare what you get for that price. For example, the flanker brands in Canada may be cheaper, but you don't get 5G. You might not get unlimited or any long distance, etc.. You have to look at what you get and how it meets your needs. Also, I seem to recall there's a low price basic service available from Canadian carriers that's in that price range.

 

[Bplayer]

The best price performer in the US seems to be Mint Mobile. Great nation wide coverage with unlimited text & talk, $15/m for 4GB data and 5G or 4G LTE. Full blown unlimited data (but only 35 GB at high rate) is $30/m. Current incentive is 3 months free when you buy any 3-month plan.

So why can't we get something like that in Canada?

 

[JamesK]

At one time, we had a lot more virtual networks. Microcell, which was the original parent of Fido, was set up as a wholesale network, which virtual networks, including Fido, resold. As I recall it was used by Sears, Cityphone and others. There was also a carrier called Clearnet, which was acquired by Telus. Clearnet also had the Mike brand.

 

[otown47]

In Canada, the cost of buying mobile services is like the cost of buying eggs and for many of the same reasons. I have a T-Mobile plan thats $45 US per month that gives me voice, text and data in 3 countries....that includes roaming.
Our Canadian mobile market is a "managed market" and are paying dearly for it.

 

[Kenneth J Adams]

I PVR'd that episode and will watch it this week.

I myself am semi OK with my plans. $52 for unlimited Canada wide talk/text with 20GB of data and use of my LTE Apple Watch at no charge. I also have a $9.00 where I get 100 minutes Canada wide with 250mb of data a month but it's more for a back up phone. I don't use their data at all however with their yearly Christmas gifts to their customers, I have about 10GB of data to use and 2000 minutes I can use any time so... really... I'm good. I think once I'm retired I will remove the $52 plan and just keep the $9.00 plan which by then will be down to $7.00 a month. Granted I will say this. To see companies like Freedom mobile offer an amazing deal like the clip below and NOT be able to get it here in Manitoba... frickin kills me as I'd jump on it HARD!!

 

[Kenneth J Adams]

BTW.... the Freedom Mobile offer should be standard across Canada for ALL networks. Problem is, greed! Nothing more than pure greed from the 3 networks.

 

[tvmaster]

The best price performer in the US seems to be Mint Mobile. Great nation wide coverage with unlimited text & talk, $15/m for 4GB data and 5G or 4G LTE. Full blown unlimited data (but only 35 GB at high rate) is $30/m. Current incentive is 3 months free when you buy any 3-month plan.

So why can't we get something like that in Canada?

And Mint piggybacks off T-Mobile.

 

[gzink]

I signed up for a few freedompop(through WalMArt only) numbers in the USA(just FYI) We get 1000 texts, 300 minutes and 100MB for $0/mon with the T-Mobile network. Granted no real data but $0. So right now I have T-mobile accts which charge by the minute but renew annually for $1 and 3 accounts with Freedompop that cost $0/year. Usually can survive with wifi. Oh and T-Mobile replaced an older 3G phone for free on one of those $1 year accounts with a 5G phone one+ brand.
I'm still OK with the PM accounts here though.

 

[Tridus]

You can't go by price alone. You also have to compare what you get for that price. For example, the flanker brands in Canada may be cheaper, but you don't get 5G. You might not get unlimited or any long distance, etc.. You have to look at what you get and how it meets your needs. Also, I seem to recall there's a low price basic service available from Canadian carriers that's in that price range.

5g only really benefits the telecoms, who can fit more users into the same bandwidth on it via the faster downloads. Users almost never even notice it, except in my case where I'm on the edge of 5g service and its not very stable compared to LTE which is rock solid.

It's all marketing hype far as 5g goes, for the end user it really adds nothing. And they want to charge extra for the privilege.

The flanker brands are just the same companies with different names, that's the whole thing. We don't have a real option like Mint here because ROBELUS owns the CRTC and the current Government talks a big game about wanting lower prices while actively refusing to actually do anything about it.

 

[JamesK]

It's all marketing hype far as 5g goes, for the end user it really adds nothing. And they want to charge extra for the privilege.

If all you do is make phone calls, then it wouldn't add much. However, heavy data users would certainly benefit and, as you mention, certain bands can support more users. On the same bands as 4G, 5G provides about a 25% performance increase, but the 3.5 GHz band can support a lot more data. I've seen over 400 Mb down on 5G. And when mmWave is available here, it will support a lot more. However, bandwidth is not the whole story. Latency is also important for applications that have nothing to do with typical phone use. They often talk about things like smart cars communicating among themselves to avoid collisions, etc.. We'll just have to see where things go with it.
BTW, another use for 5G, which expands on what's already happening on 4G, is the "last 1.6 Km" for Internet access, instead of running cables to the customer.

 

[Tridus]

The thing is that unless you're downloading an app in the field, that download speed doesn't matter. LTE can stream anything just fine, websites all load basically instantly, etc. It has few real world improvements. It's great for the Telcos because they can fit a lot more users into the same space.

mmWave is probably never coming to Canada outside a couple of very niche places. It's barely being rolled out in the US because of how it's got no range and no penetration power whatsoever. That's a dead end technology for wide deployments.

Just saying. If you gave the average user a LTE phone and told them it was 5g, very few people would ever notice a difference.

 

[ExDilbert]

mmWave's short range can be a benefit in some circumstances. It could be useful in places like stadiums and outdoor concert venues where large numbers of phones are in a very small space. Whether it's financially viable or if the venue owners want thousands of users to be able to upload video in real time is another issue.

 

[JamesK]

@ExDilbert

Also airports. There are a lot of people in a small area and many of them are killing time.

 

[ExDilbert]

Agreed. I would rather have free wifi.

 

[Tridus]

Course, putting all that expensive hardware into every phone just to use it in such a small number of places isn't really viable. I really doubt we'll ever see it roll out in any kind of widespread way in Canada.

 

[mgut]

The only way to end the oligopoly from Bell, Telus and Rogers is to allow foreign competition. Once At&t, Verizon and T-Mobile come in, they would be toast. This happened in Mexico where they allowed foreign competition in the early 2000's and prices dropped immediately. Only somewhat negative to some is the foreign carriers will focus all of their resources to major cities (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary) so the impact may be muted outside of these markets as they will have to rely on roaming but with the agreements they already have in place they will succeed. I have a friend who moved back to Canada from the states but kept is US phone and plane cause it was better and cheaper and without roaming fees he had no reason to change.

 

[57]

...Once At&t, Verizon and T-Mobile come in, they would be toast.

I guess you missed the fact that the market in Canada was opened about 10 years ago. The US carriers have no interest in Canada due to the small (relatively) market and due to pricing not being any more profitable than the US, perhaps even less profitable.

Why did Verizon pass on Canada? - Macleans.ca

Jesse Brown considers the issues that may have scared Verizon away

www.macleans.ca

 

[ExDilbert]

Mobile phone companies are still required to be more than 50% Canadian owned so it's not like just anyone can move into the Canadian market. They still need a major Canadian investor first. The largest global mobile phone company entered Canada about 10 years ago. I think it was Public but might have gone by a different name originally. They subsequently sold their stake to a Canadian incumbent after stating that Canada was the worst country in the world they had ever tried to do business. I assume that was due to a combination of regulation and anti-competitive behaviour on the part of the incumbents but I don't think it was specified.