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This will hopefully give Canadians real options for mobile phone plans. It will be "illegal" because our telecom monopoly (oligopoly) writes the laws, but presu

This will hopefully give Canadians real options for mobile phone plans. It will be "illegal" because our telecom monopoly (oligopoly) writes the laws, but presumably with a US address it will be possible, like it was with satellite dishes, to get a proper phone on a network that doesn't gouge you. I'll be curious what the monopoly does to try and fight it.

gwillen 4y ago
The satellites will surely have a certain amount of beam steering capability. (You need beamforming for this to work at all, I think.) If you're too far from the border, you may not be able to trick the system into believing you're in the US. (A lot depends on the implementation ... and what governments demand in terms of compliance.)
- javajosh 4y ago
  Would that be, like, one beam per connected user, or, like, city?
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Per cell, size of a small city.
cpncrunch 4y ago
There are affordable plans in Canada. It's just that they aren't really advertised. I have unlimited Canadian talk+text + 2GB for $35/month. Without the data (just unlimited domestic text+voice) it's $20/month. This plan isn't public...for some reason my wife got emailed about it and she got signed up. They allowed me to sign up too, even though they hadn't notified me about it. I think these plans are used to entice people on PAYG onto a plan, so they don't advertise them to everyone. For roaming data+voice I use a BNEsim e-sim, which works very well.
- quirino 4y ago
  Maybe you're not aware how much cheaper data is in other countries. Here in Brazil, unlimited Whatsapp + Voice + 5Gb costs 8$/month. Surely there are many factors to this but those Canadian prices still sound insane to me. This website (https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/#pricing https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/#pric...) lists Canada as having 50x more expensive data than Italy for instance.
  - cldellow 4y ago
    Man, as a Canadian, I hate being put in the position of defending our wireless monopolies. But here goes. That website seems... not great? I think you got a 50x ratio by dividing the average prices of $0.12 (Italy) and $5.94 (Canada). That appears to be a median...but I'd like to know how they chose the plans they used for the calculation. For example, Canada's maximum price is given as $46.02/GB. Perhaps such a plan is technically available, but I really doubt someone is using it for data, so it seems bizarre to include it in this data set. For cheapest prices, they cite $0.05/GB for Italy and $1.66/GB for Canada. But off the top of my head, Rogers, which is the #1 telco in Canada, offers $0.74/GB. Seems... odd that it didn't make it into this dataset. (And hey, I would like to know where I can pay $0.05 to get a GB/data in Italy. Full speed? On a good network?) I pay $29/mo for unlimited data in Canada. Granted - with caveats! It gets throttled after the first 6 GB. I wonder if this would be counted as $4.83/GB in this survey? Their methodology PDF is unclear.
    - quirino 4y ago
      Fair enough, I reckoned the methodology on the website probably wasn't the best, and $/GB is a pretty bad metric to begin with. I meant it mostly as an example of how there can be an order of magnitude of difference between prices, or at least half an order. I do concede my 50x number is probably very inaccurate in practice. My family's plan is 80$/month for unlimited data for 6 devices, throttled after something like 60GB between all of them. Unused data can be used on the next month. Not once have I worried about reaching any limits, even with frequent Netflix and YouTube on the go and panic downloading Spotify albums before getting on a flight.
b112 4y ago
because our telecom monopoly (oligopoly) writes the laws No, they don't.

gwillen 4y ago

The satellites will surely have a certain amount of beam steering capability. (You need beamforming for this to work at all, I think.) If you're too far from the border, you may not be able to trick the system into believing you're in the US. (A lot depends on the implementation ... and what governments demand in terms of compliance.)

javajosh 4y ago
Would that be, like, one beam per connected user, or, like, city?
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  Per cell, size of a small city.

cpncrunch 4y ago

There are affordable plans in Canada. It's just that they aren't really advertised. I have unlimited Canadian talk+text + 2GB for $35/month. Without the data (just unlimited domestic text+voice) it's $20/month. This plan isn't public...for some reason my wife got emailed about it and she got signed up. They allowed me to sign up too, even though they hadn't notified me about it. I think these plans are used to entice people on PAYG onto a plan, so they don't advertise them to everyone. For roaming data+voice I use a BNEsim e-sim, which works very well.

quirino 4y ago
Maybe you're not aware how much cheaper data is in other countries. Here in Brazil, unlimited Whatsapp + Voice + 5Gb costs 8$/month. Surely there are many factors to this but those Canadian prices still sound insane to me. This website (https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/#pricing https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/#pric...) lists Canada as having 50x more expensive data than Italy for instance.
- cldellow 4y ago
  Man, as a Canadian, I hate being put in the position of defending our wireless monopolies. But here goes. That website seems... not great? I think you got a 50x ratio by dividing the average prices of $0.12 (Italy) and $5.94 (Canada). That appears to be a median...but I'd like to know how they chose the plans they used for the calculation. For example, Canada's maximum price is given as $46.02/GB. Perhaps such a plan is technically available, but I really doubt someone is using it for data, so it seems bizarre to include it in this data set. For cheapest prices, they cite $0.05/GB for Italy and $1.66/GB for Canada. But off the top of my head, Rogers, which is the #1 telco in Canada, offers $0.74/GB. Seems... odd that it didn't make it into this dataset. (And hey, I would like to know where I can pay $0.05 to get a GB/data in Italy. Full speed? On a good network?) I pay $29/mo for unlimited data in Canada. Granted - with caveats! It gets throttled after the first 6 GB. I wonder if this would be counted as $4.83/GB in this survey? Their methodology PDF is unclear.
  - quirino 4y ago
    Fair enough, I reckoned the methodology on the website probably wasn't the best, and $/GB is a pretty bad metric to begin with. I meant it mostly as an example of how there can be an order of magnitude of difference between prices, or at least half an order. I do concede my 50x number is probably very inaccurate in practice. My family's plan is 80$/month for unlimited data for 6 devices, throttled after something like 60GB between all of them. Unused data can be used on the next month. Not once have I worried about reaching any limits, even with frequent Netflix and YouTube on the go and panic downloading Spotify albums before getting on a flight.

b112 4y ago

because our telecom monopoly (oligopoly) writes the laws No, they don't.