State of Canadian mobile plans 2017

I’ll be returning to Canada with my family in July so we’ll need to get cell phone plans. I’ve been gone for so long that I don’t remember anything about how mobile plans work in Canada except that they’re supposed to be the worst in the world.
What’s recommended? My wife and I both currently have unlocked phones and we don’t tend to use the actual phone part all that much. I never call my wife, I always use a messaging app and I only call when absolutely necessary. I probably spend 5 min a month on the phone. Do people still send texts? It seems laughable to pay for that in this day and age. Data is much more important for me but even then I rarely go over 1.5GB a month and could stay under 1GB if I had to. Is Freedom Mobile any good? It seems like you need special phones in order to take advantage of their LTE plans.

Hey Canuck, what city? I can give you the lowdown on this. Freedom/Wind uses AWS band that T-Mobile uses down south.

If you don’t need a Canadian number you could get a Tmobile plan on the US that includes free calls to and from Canada also no roaming costs when you are there. I think the unlimited data works there as well at 4G speeds.

This only becomes a concern when you’re wanting people to call you and they have to dial long distance to the US to reach you. Which will kind of suck for them, because many people will have free long distance calling between provinces, few will have unlimited US calling. Even texting is considered international to the US, and is billed at a higher rate per text, even with a standard unlimited text plan.

So, yeah, Canuck, let us know which city or province you’re headed to, because that will play a big part on where you’ll find the best plan.

I’ll be in Toronto. Would appreciate any help. In Japan I use an MVNO where, while the talk time sucks, I get 2GB of data a month for about $25 all included.

MobileSyrup is a Canadian cell coverage site. They have a weekly plan roundup: http://mobilesyrup.com/2017/05/29/changes-canadian-carrier-cellphone-rate-plan-may-wk-22/

I’m in Western Canada and I’ve been on all of them. The cheapest provider with great coverage is Public Mobile, or as I call them Pubic. Same network as TELUS which is great unlike the city-only-ass coverage of Wind.

www.publicmobile.ca

Prepay for 90 days to save even the most, You just missed a great promo plan a few weeks ago, but it might come again and if you’re already a subscriber when it hits next time you can switch to it on your next billing cycle.

I’m on the $120 for 3 months (12GB of data bucket, unlimited text, provincial voice) you can use all 12GB in 1 day/first month or pace yourself over 3 months.

Currently it costs $186 over 3 months or $62/month. This is $20-40/month cheaper than data+share plans required on subsidized plans by the big three.

Unlocked and TELUS/Koodo phones work without needing special bands or unlock. If you do go with them, PM me to use me as a referral so we both save money.

If this has been useful to you, hit the Like but…oh nevermind.

Thanks Rei,
If we go that route I’ll PM you. We don’t even arrive in Canada until mid-July so no decisions until then. My wife has an unlocked iPhone 5c and I’ve got a Moto X Play. Hopefully there will be no compatibility problems.

I see that Bell and Rogers have “shareable plans” now? Is that a thing? Do you get a couple of sim cards and basically share minutes and data? I wonder if that would make sense financially in the long run. My wife is not really a big user of data. Her phone is basically for making calls, checking maps and getting Line messages.

I checked out Bell Canada and they have a shareable plan that’s unlimited local calling and 2.5GB of data for $70 a month. But when you get to the sim card part there’s no option to get multiple sim cards. So how does that work for the other people that you’re sharing with? Do they also need a $70/month plan? Because then you’re not really sharing, in my opinion.

edit Oh, I see. You can add a family member for $30 a month. Well that brings it up to $100 a month, so not really a savings over a cheaper option although I suppose you maybe get the best network speeds and reliability.

Yeah that’s why the $40/month with 4GB on Pubic is comparatively a steal. Share plans are a ripoff for heavy single household users like me and not really much of a savings for a pidding 2-3GB between two people.

There is the option on dual SIM phones like the OnePlus where you use the cheapest talk/text SIM like 7-11 Speakout which is $20-100 for a YEAR expiry and use the other SIM for 4G data purely on a flex tablet plan (Pubic or Fido) for $15-40 a month for 1-6GB. Good phones will allow you to use both on a phone: I do this as well since I have two phones: a 6S+ and a OnePlus 3

Rogers (Robbers who also operate Virgin, Chatr, Solo mobile and Fido) also sell services to President’s Choice mobile (imprint belonging to Loblaw’s grocery chain) and Petro Canada wireless (gas chain) I think. That or Bell and TELUS own the smaller fake “MNVOs.” Koodo is the budget brand owned by TELUS, and Pubic is the super budget brand they bought, used to be Dave Wireless. It’s lowest price because no telephone operators to call for CS, all-self-service online on forums. Public sends you a free SIM.

All the smaller carriers resell TELUS/Bell (bell uses telus in the west and telus uses bell in the east) and Rogers. Rogers is the only one with a 2G network still. This may be a useless fact but some cheap/mid-range dual SIM cards only allow the 2nd SIM to be used for text + voice on a 2G network and the primary SIM can be used for 3G/4G data +voice+text. However, modern networks in Canada use 3G for voice + text even if you don’t have a data plan.

My OnePlus 3 allows me to use 3G activation for text + voice on SIM1, and SIM2 3G+4G data + voice + text. My old Xiaomi dual SIM phone did not allow me to do this. So I use TELUS for my work-government number and text and my 12GB of DATA over 3 months on Pubic (as well as having text/voice available that i’ve never given out but can use as a “secret” 2 factor authentication reception method.)

This does not apply to Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Quebec who have province-owned (soon to change) or different players. Sask and Manitoba have/had cheapest plans by far because the province owned a carrier but one has a pending sale to Bell. The Big 3 (Rogers, TELUS, Bell) have a virtual oligopoly throughout all of Canada so there’s no real competition, their prices drop and raise in unison.

Ooh, that’s an idea. The Moto X Play is dual sim. Maybe I should look into that as I try to avoid calling people like the plague.

I think @rei covered it well; basically prepare to be annoyed, then angry, then sad. I was in Best Buy a few months ago and a guy (looked lower income though I shouldn’t judge) agreed to a $125 a month plan. Ouch.

My two bits:

Avoid Wind, unless you have an overbearing mother and you always want to be “the person you are trying to reach is unavailable.” Seriously it looks cheap but I honestly wouldn’t use them as my primary phone for $30 a month… That is them paying me.

Rogers, Bell and Telus are going to be expensive. Don’t bother with the mall kiosks or calling in. You need to get in on a corporate plan. Many if not most Canadians are on some form of corporate plan. Assuming you have a job lined up, ask. Expect to pay $60 a month for a good plan plus or minus.

If you don’t have a corporate plan and are buying as a plain consumer, your best mainstream options are Fido, Virgin, and Koodo. Expect to pay $65-70 a month plus whatever your phone costs (up to $40 a month).

The prepaid deals such as Rei’s are another option to get you into an acceptable price range, though my understanding is they take a bit more maintenance.

Well, I’m back in Canada and I ended up going with Koodo. If you get their base unlimited texting plan then you can add talk and data boosters that will roll over from month to month until you’ve used them up. So the base is $15 a month and then I got 500 minutes of anytime Canada wide talk time plus a 100 minute bonus because I’m doing the automatic top ups. Then I got a 1gb booster for $30. Now, that means I’m going to have to limit myself when it comes to using the Internet but I don’t mind that so much. I’d like to keep my usage to about 500 mb per month which would essentially make my cell bill $30 a month. We’ll see how that goes. I actually checked out a couple of sites today (Amazon and some beard products website) and was shocked to see that Chrome had used 19mb of data in just those few page views. I definitely need to block some ads. I installed Adguard and it seems to be doing a good enough job that I guess I’ll end up paying for a license. Are they a decent company?

Oh by the way, does anyone know whether with Koodo, does your talk time get consumed both when you’re making and receiving calls or just making them?

Hey Canuck welcome back. For Koodo, no impact on minutes if you receive calls.

1GB for $30? That’s criminal! Public is still $40/month for 2GB + unlimited talk/text provincially if you prepay for 90 days. :) Same network as Koodo.

For Android without rooting, I use Android Firefox with the uBlock Origin addon. Or AdBlock Plus Browser from Eyeo corporation. If you root, then I install the “Ad-Away” APK, it’s free but needs root.

You’re right, it is pretty crap. Fortunately with the prepaid I can easily switch if it doesn’t work out. I consumed a fair amount of data living in Japan just with Chrome and forum browsing but that’s mainly because I was spending 2 hours commuting every day. Now I’ll be about 10 minutes from the U of T campus so I suspect I’ll really only need it for my messaging apps and to do the odd price comparison so I’m hoping I can stretch it. But we’ll see.

since we last talked about plans i sold my oneplus3 for a paltry 300 CAD to upgrade to a oneplus 5.

incidentally, i confirmed a cheapo dual sim like the blu R1 HD ($100-150) can’t do dual 3g in its sims but the oneplus 3, 3t and 5 can. while a cell phone can only use 1 sim out of the 2 for 3g/4g/lte data, 3g is needed to activate voice + texting on modern networks nowadays.

on cheaper phones where the secondary sim can’t activate voice + text, only a 2g provider will work. the only 2g provider left in canada is robbers, er, rogers and its various mnvos like speakout, chatr, fido etc.