Canadian cellphone packages
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- 26 Responses
- sherman
Anyone have any tips or recommendations for getting a cellphone in Canada (BC)?
- Mimio0
Return your empty beer cans?
- madirish0
Rodgers?
Virgin Mobile?above this, i would recommend just buying a service plan you are happy with. wtf?
- sherman0
dude i have no idea ~ I havent started looking. I just got out of a 10 year term and I need to replace my phone.
- sherman0
Trying to get a decent plan in canada is like buying a winnabago from the man.
- _eh_0
I'm with rogers, mainly because I work for them and receive a discount. They are a pretty good provider though.
- sherman0
Canadians just get screwed on our plans compared to the US market.
- czawada0
I find that Rogers completely blows in more rural areas, I even get shitty service in Port Moody of all places. I have a TELUS phone for work and it gets much better service.
If you plan to get an iPhone at any point (even hacked ones) you'll need to get Rogers or Fido, none of the others will work with it.
Good luck Shermdawg!
- i_monk0
I hate Rogers to death. I got back from Seoul 3 months ago but I'm still phoneless. I might go with Virgin (Bell in disguise) on a pay-as-you-go basis.
- pango0
every phone plan in BC blows! seriously everything is overpriced.
Rogers has pretty decent reception everywhere. but they count by minutes. witch is really easy to go over $100 a month if your not watching.
Fido is pretty good, altho they are owned by rogers but plans are different and they count by seconds.
telus...mehhh.... not so good in my area. i feel like they aren't doing so good lately.- Try using your rogers phone in a remote, things don't even work on Whistler Mountain.czawada
- um it did work in whistler for me and works great in other country without doing any changes. just a bit priceypango
- In the village or on the mountain. I can't get any reception up on the mountain with my Rogers phone.czawada
- Jaline0
Didn't you guys hear the news? They're opening up the extra bandwidth (or whatever you call it) and new, smaller companies are going to bid on it. So there is the possibility of more competition and lower prices by 2009 or so. The bidding will occur in March 2008 (or sometime near that month), and the larger companies HAVE to let the winner use their existing lines.
By the way, I find that Virgin Mobile is by far the best for pay-as-you-go because you can buy $50 (which lasts 4 months) and $100 (lasts a whole year!) cards. Pretty sweet. Obviously this is only effective for people who don't talk as much on the phone (like myself). Not sure who is good for monthly payments, as I find most of them suck.
- pango0
yes i'm thinking witching pay-as-you-go. but i still have 2 yrs plan on my phone... :( good to know they are good tho. hows the reception on virgin?
- MSTRPLN0
I've been on pay-as-you go with Fido since 1998 because i refuse to ever sign a contract for phone usage with any of these providers. They're straight garbage. Thankfully I rarely use my cell phone so it works out for me as I used to get voice mail, callerID, and call forwarding included for $30 per 60 days. Now Fido has smartened up and changed their rates forcing people on prepaid to either shell out $20 for 20 days or $30 for 30 days as the more popular choices.
Hearing about this Virgin $50 for 4 months sounds like a good plan to me, how has the service been? what is included?
- JKilla770
Yeah the "Man" is stepping in because of lack of competition. So they're say'n hey share your networks! So towers will be open to all and the owners of said towers will charge a rental fee for those who use it. Hurray!
Bell, Telus, Solo, Virgin = CDMA
Rogers, Fido = GSM
Also Virgin apparently has the worst customer service so I would def stay away from them.
I have Bell and it's not too bad, but their phone selection is really limited. They also don't have the Fav 5 deals like Telus and Rogers. Telus is a heartless corporation and after the strike business I have no respect for them. Rogers have hte best phone selection but the coverage thing is ture. I think I saw a heat map of the different carriers at one point but don't remeber where. Also Rogers are pricks when it comes to billing. If you Pay via online banking they get all up in your face because it takes them a week to proccess a payment so if you pay it within a week you'll get a call and the bitch at you to pay it earlier, which is ridiculus.
- Rogers has pissed me off in the past. In fact, they continue to be a bitch to my sisters. I won't use them.Jaline
- MSTRPLN0
p.s. is Virgin GSM?
- JKilla770
If you end up on Rogers you can hit up some Shops in Richmond and get some Asian import phones for a bit cheaper, and in some cases have better software/capabilities than their NA counter parts. In general Asian Motorolas are better, as they are trying to capture a bigger portion of the Asian market.
- Jaline0
MSTRPLN, I don't know about the customer service, but then again, I don't care about customer service. Maybe that's a bad thing to say, but I already have low expectations of every service before I use them, so whenever they give me good service I am amazed.
Anyway, I only chose Virgin Mobile because they offer the $50 and $100 cards that last a really long time. Seems worth it to me. The phones are the greatest, but I bought a good one for about $200 and I don't even use my phone that much.
Here are the features:
http://virginmobile.ca/site/en/p…Comes with lots of stuff.
- i_monk0
I used to hate the phone, but in Korea I started texting like mad. I was on pay-as-you-go, and for about $30 I got about 4 months of talk and texting. Do they still have the bullshit charges here for each text message? I'm glad I kept my phone from last year though.
Jaline - This is Canada, so this is what will happen: 5 or so small companies will start up, and in three years or so they'll be owned by Rogers and we'll be back where we are now.
