Broadband and Cellphone $
 

It seems to cost more in US and Canada than everywhere else.
The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2019, By David Leonhardt
"Big Business Is Overcharging You $5,000 a Year"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/10/o...er-prices.html
https://i.imgur.com/wa2wb47.png

Cell prices in Canada have dropped like 20% in the past few years and the rise of Freedom as a viable 4th provider in Ontario, Alberta, and BC is a big contributor to that.

In Ottawa we're lucky because we're the only city in Canada to have 2 regional providers (Freedom and Videotron) due to straddling the border of Ontario and Quebec.

Everybody like to complain about Cell Phone prices in Canada, yet they don't really understand it and the challenges and costs to deploy such service in a vast area as Canada. Its easy and cheap to deploy cell coverage in Singapore with the huge population densities, but here we need towers in vast fields to provide coverage for 2 people and a bunch of cattle and deer, so much more expensive to deploy and maintain.
Overall, I am satisfied with my cell service and cost, I just upgraded wife's phone to iPhone XR yesterday for $100 and she pays $50/month for unlimited talk/text and 5GB. Once I factor the 24 months contract for the smartphone subsidy (around $25/month on the tab), that's $25/month for the service... pretty cheap, Canada wide on Fido (Rogers)

Pretty easy to reduce your cellphone costs to zero .... :tup:

Yes... our poor poor oligarchy, whatever will they do with their incredibly high wireless profit margins! (some of the highest on the planet...)

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I also got an effective service cost of $25 a month with Freedom Mobile, but it has 12GB of data instead. Freedom is awesome.

I would highly recommend Freedom. Their new plans no longer charge roaming fees for talk and text outside of their home zone, and my plan also gives 1GB of free data I can use while on Canada roaming. The concern about leaving the city doesn't really apply anymore.

I use freedom too. Is the last part only for your plan, or does it apply to every single plan? Mine has unlimited text, talk and data but it was a plan grandfathered from 2013.

They only stopped charging for domestic talk& text roaming about 2 years ago and I don't think they applied that change to old plans

I use data for my cottage (no braodband there), so Freedom doesn't work for me, but in the city its the way to go. Also check out Fizz (Videotron)

I'm sure you'd blow past 1GB pretty fast if it's your sole internet at the cottage (that's how much out-of-city data my plan includes) but for most people who live in the city, 1GB is more than enough to cover occasional country trips.

Since I recently moved to the US.. just for fun here’s a hard datapoint comparison:

AT&T monthly plan.. $40, 8GB, unlimited voice/texts, full roaming all over US, Canada, Mexico included.

aside.. A work colleague from India pays $2/month for 45GB data all over India 😳

If you got Freedom in Ottawa, can you travel to Montreal and still use the phone?

Yes. Freedom's network itself covers the major urban centres of Southern Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia, but in the rest of Canada, it switches to the "Nationwide" network, which is roaming on all the other providers networks. A Freedom phone automatically switches on and off of Nationwide as you enter and exit Freedom's coverage area. Your phone lets you know in the status tray when you're in Nationwide (in Android, a little triangle or an "R" symbol for roaming appears above the bars). If heading to Montreal on the 417, the switch usually happens around the Boundary Road exit.

Freedom plans give you unlimited talk and text when on Nationwide, but they do limit your data. The cheap Freedom plans don't give you any data at all in Nationwide (charging you a fee per megabyte), but the medium-to-high end ones give you a fixed amount of data you can use on Nationwide.

By default, the Android software automatically disables the data connection (but leaves the talk/text part of the network enabled) when you enter Nationwide, to prevent accidental use of data that could result in charges. You have to manually set your phone to use data in Nationwide if you want to.

One really cool fact: When in Nationwide, Freedom actually has the best rural coverage of any network, because Nationwide combines every network. Nationwide will connect to whichever Rogers, Bell, Telus, Videotron, or SaskTel tower has the strongest signal, so in rural areas, Freedom subscribers actually have the best network quality.