I had to do a double take after I put myself back into my chair and fastened my seatbelt when I saw the price of data transfer on the Virgin Mobile Canada website: $51 200 per gigabyte! Holy shit Batman! Are you kidding me? (See the “Canada Rates” tab at “Long Distance and Roaming“.) On a low-end high-speed Internet connection for a residential customer, that would translate into a bill of $6.4 million per month if you used your full bandwidth allotment! How is that justifiable when other packages on their site are advertised at a “mere” $15 per gigabyte, less than three ten-thousandths of the price? How is it justifiable, period?!
Virgin Mobile Canada data rate of $51 200 per GB!
Virgin Mobile Canada data rate of $15 per GB.
It just highlights what is common knowledge among any Canadians even vaguely aware of cell phone rates outside of Canada. We have among the highest rates (on voice and data) anywhere in the world — the absolute highest according to some surveys. Even Somalia, a Third World country in the thrall of pirates and warlords that has been without a functioning government for over two decades, has better and more competitive cell service than Canada. Why we put up with this, and why our government continues to allow the cell phone companies to gang together and collectively bend us over and screw us, is beyond my comprehension.
So having braved looking at a cell phone company’s website again, I’m going to retreat back into my Luddite cave as I head down the home stretch of my fifth year without the financial millstone of a cell phone hanging around my neck.
Some more links for your consideration:
- Canada is a telecom backwater, says bold backer of Wind Mobile
- Key Report Highlights Strategies to Fix “Broken Cell Phone Market”
- Spectrum policy in Canada: Levelling the playing field for affordable rates and breadth of choice
- Stop The Cell Phone Squeeze
Update, 14 March 2012: A glimmer of hope on the horizon: Ottawa opens telecom to foreigners, although the announcement is a bit of a mixed bag. Not that I think that “foreigners” are Canadians’ salvation, but our own countrymen (and -women) are quite happy to screw us. However, with Canada being the most expensive place on the planet to own and operate a cell phone, there is only one way for prices to go … assuming the tendency will be to head towards the middle of the pack, and not into the stratosphere! It’s competition and a smashing of the oligopoly that’s needed, and if that means that it takes Europeans, Asians or even Africans owning cell phone companies 100%, then so be it.