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Comment by nckbz | Hacker News Reader

The saddest part about this, for us in Canada, is that when we see any American advertised cell phone or internet deals our natural response is "Damn, those Americans got it good over there." I pay around 90 a month for 200 minutes and 4gb of data with unlimited texting under Rogers. Canadian plans are a joke. Seeing this article with a $38.00 plan for phone, internet, and TV is just completely unfathomable for me. :P

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Mobilicity and/or Wind Mobile not available in your city? $45 a month for "unlimited" data, NA voice and global text.

Of course in a few years the big three will purchase them ala Fido and PCS and it will back to the status quo, but in the meantime I am enjoying sane cell phone rates.

I haven't checked mobilcity, but Wind Mobile is only available in a few cities (and not very far outside of the cities) over here in western canada.

Mobilicity's network is even smaller geographically, but both are excellent options for those covered.

I think this actually has something to do with why we pay so much for this kind of service in Canada. Our population is so thinly spread (other than a few major cities, who do have these cheap alternatives) that I bet if they even tried to cover second tier cities, they'd lose money. European countries have the advantage of being really small.

There's plenty of small remote towns in Sweden

According to Wikipedia,Sweden has 20.6 people per square kilometer,compared to 3.4 in Canada. Also,Canada is slightly larger. Much easier to cover all (or most) of Sweden than Canada

Sure, but you don't live in the middle of the Northwest Territories, and neither do the vast majority of Canadians complaining about telecom prices. The population density figure is a bit of a red herring.

Here's another stat to look at. Southern Ontario, roughly up to Algonquin Park, has around 12 million people on about 140,000 km^2. Sweden has around 9.5 million people on about 450,000 km^2. Going purely by area or density criteria, southern Ontario should have telecom service miles ahead of Sweden, even in towns that are tiny and remote by southern Ontario standards.

Just remember that Wind and Moblicity are on a different network than Rogers, Telus, Fido and Bell.

My experience with Wind is that the reception is my city (Ottawa) is terrible at best. I'm considering switching to Moblicity.

Don't the Canadian carriers also require 3-year contracts on subsidized phones?

Most of the time, yes. Unless you want to triple the monthly fee.

I can get 1000 minutes 1000 texts and 1gb for 7.50€ in Austria with each additional gb costing 5€. This is without a phone of course.

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