Terahertz

Choice can suck sometimes. Especially when you want to be sceptical about new purchases.

Canada is notorious for having horribly over-priced cellular telephone rates, so when faced with the prospect of having to purchase a new cell plan, I would almost rather resort to smoke signals.

Nevertheless, I tabulated a chart that picks the best deals for myself which require:

• Being really cheap – I want to pay as little as possible, and definitely not more than $40 per month
• Having at least 100 or 200 anytime minutes a month, potentially supplemented by a large amount of evening/weekend minutes
• A good amount text messaging, roughly >100-200 texts per month
• Potentially cheap mobile web access, but not necessary.
• Cheap long distance (I have to call Calgary and Toronto a few times a month), so either affordable per minute rates, or a cheap plan
• Cheap voice-mail and caller display. I haven’t had these on a cell and I’m getting tired of missing calls and not knowing who called.
• Good selection of affordable (with plan) phones could be the dealbreaker. My current cell phone is an older Samsung cell with no bells or whistles.
• Potentially going GSM over CDMA if I ever plan to go to Europe with a phone, although that may be a couple month trip at most, and is not a dealbreaker

With that, here’s my findings:

First, I’ll point out that despite having reasonable low cost plans, Telus, Rogers, and Solo (a Bell subsidiary) all get killed by tacking on a $7-9 system access fee per month, and a 50-75c 911 fee. This cuts me down to Bell, Koodo (a Telus subsidiary), Fido (a Rogers subsidiary), and Virgin Mobile.

Next, I’ve been on Fido before, but before they were bought out by Rogers. My contract (eventually) ended with them after my phone was stolen and I cancelled my plan. After they continued charging my parents a bill while I had no active phone with them, we eventually complained enough for them to cancel all charges. It was not impressive, and makes me wary of signing a contract with Fido.

Fido also offers only 125 text messages per month, or you can splurge $20 / month for 10,000 more messages. Where’s the middle ground?

Looking at Bell’s student plan, it specificallyy advertises “No options” so overall it fails my criteria, and considering a no-frills plan still comes to $35 / month, it gets cut as well.

Now, Koodo has shit options for phones. With only 4 different phones advertiesed, one would have to be damn awesome for me to pick them. The advantage is they don’t require contracts, but tie the phone discounts into monthly bills. So to get $150 off a bill, I’d have be with them for over 3 years. With them I’d likely go for the MOTOKRZR.

Virgin (also under Bell in Canada) meanwhile, can offer the MOTOKRZR for $0 on a 3-year contract. With the myText&Talk plan, they also cover all the texting I could need. Voicemail and text is also a pretty good deal, and the $6 / month for 50 minutes of long distance may be useful in the future.

Virgin Mobile also has a strong social justice policy, which at least makes me feel a bit better about my choices (this website is powered by 100% Green Energy).

So overall, the major providers suck. I’ll likely try to heckle with Virgin Mobile in a couple weeks and go for their plan with the KRZR. If anyone else out there has a better, cheap deal in Canada, let me know.

Update: I ended up going with Virgin Mobile for a 3 year plan with the LG Rumor phone. I’m on the $25/month MyTalk&Text plan with $10 for voicemail and caller-ID added. I also got the first 3 months with unlimited incoming calls. For an extra $5 I could go (in the future) to the $25/month MyCalls with unlimited local incoming and the $15 bundle which gives unlimited text, caller ID and voicemail (for $40/month total). I’ll likely stay on what I have though. At least with Virgin you can change your plan 1/month for no penalty.