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.
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
I was in Spain last June. Took a pre-paid SIM for the duration of the stay:
-50GB of data. I shared the connection all the time with 2 other devices, no issue, no warning. -Unlimited calls through all of Europe -30mins calls international (inc. back to Canada} -15€ tax included, that’s ~21CAD -valid 1month -10€ to top up or extend, since I already had the SIM
We’re getting milked here!!
They keep saying it’s because of the size of the country here, but they fail to mention that Australia which has lower population density than we have has way lower prices. They also fail to mention that that the federal government pays them billions to install the equipment in remote areas… Yeah
Why don’t we just have a state owned telecommunications provider? It works so well in Quebec with the electricity, some of the lowest prices in the world!
Fuck, I just got back from NZ and it was $88 for a SIM, 60 days unlimited calling, 100GB data, and 250 minutes to a big list of countries (incl Canada).And they’re working on using Starlink to improve the network in the South Island so they have less impact from towers in the mountains
Canadian telcos have the highest ARPU in the world, it’s ridiculous. The telephone/internet/cell towers should be run by a crown corp and the telcos pay into it. We fucked up privatizing, but that seems to be the status quo
Exactly! And if you don’t like the idea of having a state-owned telco, we could leave the infrastructure only to the state-owned company, and open access to all incumbents, same rate for everyone. While we’re there, we should just have the same with broadband: a state owned company deploys fiber. All ISP access it at the same rate.
No more complaining they need to make hundreds of % of margin otherwise they can’t invest, and even then they can’t invest if the government doesn’t heavily subsidize the network.
You said it man. The prices in Canada are fuckin criminal. And every time the government tries to rein in the Big Three, they go:
Oh, nooooooononono, you can’t restrict us, we’d have to do massive layoffs, and youuuuu wouldn’t want thaaaaaat would you?
It’s a goddamn joke.