[vchynarov]

I have ranted about the terrible quality of consumer telecommunications in Canada for years - I am terribly excited. I have lived in both the US and Canada, moving between both for the past 6 years, and I am always thrilled to use American providers.

Anecdotal data point: For a while, AT&T had an North-America wide plan for $~40/45 for month with 10G LTE with the rest being 3G. I kept this in Canada because there would be nothing close to this there - it was cheaper to use the American service.

I've always used my own phone with prepaid plans and the cheapest plans in Canada are awful compared to the cheapest plans in the USA. I also lived in the GTA, not some remote village.

[canada_dry]

Another Canuck here... I've been using a low cost data-less plan for years because I can't justify paying four+ times as much just for data when I'm away from wifi!

When I traveled in Africa several years ago I paid about $20 for a one month data plan (1GB IIRC) that included a usb dongle to connect to my laptop. In Canada the same service would have cost ~$100 at the time.

The duopoly in Canada ensures little will change unless it's mandated by legislation. Having Musk enter the fray is welcomed news.

[gnabgib]

Is your duopoly DSL (Bell, Telus, SaskTel, TekSavvy^) and Cable (Shaw, Rogers, Cogeco, Videotron, TekSavvy^)? Or some subset of the mobile (Telus, Rogers, Bell, Shaw/Freedom, Fido^, Chatr^, Koodo^, Virgin^, 7-11^, PC^, PetroCanada^) providers? Either way, this is a bit disingenuous. Totally agree we pay too much, but 6GB with a $1G phone subsidy for $70cad (52usd) is competitive.

Yes we get hosed on roaming (even you Rogers). But, it turns out a local sim is inexpensive, unlocking is guaranteed free even even under that contract (for more than a year now)

It was terrible, it's currently improving. It doesn't compare to a £15 sim in London with 15GB of data and unlimited chat/text in 2017. Nor do the plans for Canada's shorts[0]

[0] : https://www.google.com/search?q=canada's+shorts