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Data plans costs a lot in Canada owing to some reasons we will be sharing below. Canada cell phone data plans are expensive costing high prices. To understand what may have been the reason here is a full analysis culled from answer given by Giulio Moro.
Giulio has firsthand experience in the electronics, computer, and customer service indu for Over 30 years of service. We got to feature his analysis as it stands to clear the air on why data plans are expensive in Canada.
Why Are Canadian Cell Phone Plans Expensive?
In Canada the three big Telcos lobby the CRTC to actively block any competition or newcomers that want to setup business on their own network or to roam onto an existing one. The Telcos are always pushing to protect “their interests”, their revenue. They’re not here to service you properly, but to dictate how you use their services, when you’ll use their services, and how much you pay them for that privilege. The banks are no different in any regards. Apple does the exact same with their cell phones and tablets.
When anyone wants to setup a new carrier, they try everything to stop them legally, and even enact laws to protect their interests. Remember what happened to Wind (now Freedom) and Mobilicity? They had to fight it through the courts against the Telcos, and finally the Telcos lost when the challenge was brought into the courts and finally succumbed to pressure by Ottawa’s Parliamentary involvement. Hurrah for the Canadian consumer, finally, after decades of being cheated by them. Anyone remember the famous “system access fee” they charged monthly as a government regulatory fee? Almost 15 years later someone in Government realised there was no such fee and then the many class-action lawsuits files against these companies somehow quietly faded away. And still not one penny ever returned back to the paying customers cheated for decades, since the 80’s.
Years later Mobility was sold to Rogers, blended into their Chatr line, and now Mobility exists no more.
What we have in Canada is not enough competition, leaving the big companies to collude with the CRTC to dictate to the consumer how they operate. If USA companies like Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile came into Canada you’d quickly see the big three Telcos here cry murder and close their doors on the mobile sector as they’ve been living too fat on the hog for too long, and their drop in revenues will collapse them as they’d supposedly be “unable to compete fairly or openly”.
Other countries, like The UK, India, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Lithuania, and etc enjoy much cheaper rates, with many more services provided as well. Checkout prepaid plans from Mexico and Morocco that have 5–15GB/mth of data, free global roaming, lots of talk and text and most cost $12–18/mth CDN. And those companies still report a healthy profit margin yearly.
Fido was once independent, until Rogers bought them, then jacked up the rates, turned down the services, almost crippled the device selection, and got rid of many of their plans. Google the 3 different City Fido plans they used to have starting from $17.50/mth with unlimited incoming calls, or $45/mth with unlimited calling and only $0.20/min roaming rates while everyone else was, and is still at $1.70USD/min. They even had an unlimited North American mobile data plan for $50/mth that somehow quietly disappeared without telling customers it was being discontinued. And this was many years before people started widely using data on a daily basis.
But we do have some decent choices in some areas. If you’re lucky enough to live in a Freedom Mobile (formerly Wind Mobile) zone, they have some excellent plans with data that are quite a bit cheaper than the big 3’s offerings. And if you signed-up for their old $50/60 plan or any of their current $50+ plans that also include roaming, the real issue of extra charges up here in Canada.
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The odd thing is that many subsidy companies, Koodo from Telus, Fido, Chatr/Mobilicity from Rogers, and now Lucky Mobile from Bell, all offer much better services and pricing, when compared to their parent companies.
And we have very little choice when it comes to MVNO’s, unlike The USA, The UK, and many other countries.
There are choices and options to help you save money, but it all boils-down to where you decide to live and work. So what people need to do is talk to others about their needs and even reach out to people such as much that help people do just this in an effort to get the best return on investment (ROI) that works for them.
