Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2019-07-16 04:47 pm
brin_bellway) wrote2019-07-16 04:47 pm
Entry tags:
Postscript to phone post
(apparently there was enough of an uproar that they've decided to retain that plan option for a little while longer; they don't seem to have decided how long)
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(I am used to not actually helping anybody when I post Canada-specific advice: I made the first post primarily to talk about my own feelings about the announcement, and made the postscript primarily for completeness)
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Things might very well have changed since last year (which is when I did the deep dive into this subject), but last I checked there were three Canadian providers that are at all worth considering:
Public Mobile:
+ Low-tier plans that go down very low indeed.
++ Data and minute add-ons (as opposed to stuff that comes standard with a plan) rollover indefinitely. As long as you're still subscribed to some plan of theirs or other, the add-ons do not expire.
* The $8/month plan comes with 50 minutes, 50 texts, and 0 MB per month.
+- No overage: if you run out of something, they cut you off. If you run out of standard minutes but have a long-distance add-on, it will begin burning long-distance minutes on local calls, so effectively the overage fee is 3.75 c/min (paid up-front in $15 increments; you can also buy a half-sized pack of US minutes for $8 if you [are broke enough for this to be more affordable in the short-term] or [expect to change providers soon]). (*double-checks* Looks like they've also added a Canada-only minute package that's $5 for 500 minutes, I guess specifically for overage.) Likewise, you can get data add-ons to act as overage data (the cheapest-per-MB add-on is $30 for 1 GB). You cannot currently buy overage texts, but you can use an email or VoIP account to send texts over mobile data.
+ They give a $1/month discount for each year you stay with them, up to 5. (In theory: I think they've only actually been around for 3 or 4 years.)
+ Let me know if you decide to go with them and I will give you Dad's phone number so you can say he referred you.
Chatr:
+++ Free overage data! (They just severely throttle your speed instead.) This is a pretty standard practice in the States, but AFAIK Chatr is the only Canadian provider that does it (Lucky Mobile seems to have stopped), and that alone puts them into the running.
* Plans with free-but-throttled overage data start at $25/month if you agree to pay an extra 40 c/min for outgoing calls (but incoming is free, coordinate with your interlocutor appropriately), $35 otherwise. Paying more gets you more pre-throttle data.
Freedom Mobile:
--- Extremely limited service area. *Extremely* limited. Like, GTA, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, that kind of limited. (Not even Montreal, apparently.) Notably, my own house's inclusion in their service area is...shall we say, iffy at best. As such, I didn't dig much further into their details because they were so obviously unsuited for me.
(You can still *use* the phone in the yellow-shaded area, and it looks like for *some* parts of *some* plans they don't even revert to pay-per-use, but figuring out what you can do and how much it will cost will probably be complicated and expensive. I know a guy who spends a lot of time in rural areas for work, has a Freedom Mobile plan, and just kind of shrugs and deals with his wildly varying per-month cost and ignores everyone telling him to just get a rural-friendly provider already, oh my god.)
- Weird spectrum band, not all phones can use it. The guy I bought my phone from on Kijiji warned me that the phone (intended for use in Europe) cannot handle Freedom Mobile's band, but I'd already decided I was never going with them so who cares.
+ Their full-speed data plans are quite large apparently.
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(I was going to talk here about plans that are all pay-per-use all the time, and how in very particular circumstances these might be worth considering, but I checked and the two providers I was thinking of seem to have stopped carrying them. But PC does now have a $10/month plan similar but slightly inferior to Public Mobile's, so I guess that's good to know.
...oh hey, Petro-Canada Mobility still has the pay-per-use plan. $100/year (the minimum top up) is one of the cheapest options out there *if* you can avoid ever needing more than the minimum amount, but proper use requires constant optimisation and cost-benefit analyses and that does tend to eat away at you.)
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In general, I tell people that if they use little data *or* a lot of video-streaming data, go with Public Mobile (whichever plan is the smallest that fits their needs); if they want a lot of data but don't mind throttling, go with Chatr.
(And to use Wi-Fi whenever possible†: the number of people I see using their mobile plan for [playing Pokemon Go]/[watching music videos]/[making pay-per-use phone calls]†† while inside Wi-Fi hotspots boggles me.)
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†Canada is way undermapped, but it's better than nothing and also the data is crowdsourced (so you're welcome to join me in making it less undermapped).
††All actual examples.
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