@PublicM0bileSux wrote:
As Telus rakes in the profits at our expense ...
Anyone defending this has Stockholm Syndrome. The so-called cheap rates offered by Public Mobile are rape of the common man, and in this time of economic disparity it's ridiculous to defend it.
Mobile data is nominally intended for "casual" users. Yes, the manufacturers and the providers are all about encouraging more consumption to make their profits - getting people more addicted to their phones. Indeed, they make a lot of money - perhaps more money - from their tracking, telemetry, spyware, and data-mining (which they sell to advertisers and data-brokers) than from selling the primary service itself.
So mobile data is sold as a precious commodity. It is "valued" at whatever price the market will accept. They won't stop selling it and they won't make it cheaper as long as people keep buying it. You may or may not be aware that Canada's market is "protected" - run by the Big Three networks - aggressively territorial about preventing competitors to trespass on their turfs.
If you need more data than you can get from a mobile plan then you'll have to pay the price or look at alternatives. I get 75GB 10Mbps cellular data almost everywhere I go - with unlimited rollover of unused portions which just keeps accumulating each month - for about $20/month from Xplornet. I get effectively unlimited (over 1TB per month, lol) gigabit-rate data from DSL at school, from optic at work, from broadband at home - "fixed" or "wired" or "landline" data is vastly superior and bigger and faster and cheaper than any laughable ripoff cellular offering. I have a friend who subscribes to a foreign cellular provider, she gets 100GB "fast LTE" roaming data in most of Asia and North America (including all of Canada), even though she hardly uses the Singapore-based phone number attached to her plan (because it's "roaming" and "long-distance" in Canada) so she also buys a cheap Public Mobile plan.
Indeed, if you're really hurting for data and then go looking for a free wifi hotspot. At a fast-food place, a cafe, a public library. It's not the best but it costs nothing and it's better than nothing.
There are countless options and alternatives. You can simply accept what the advertisers want to sell you or you can put some effort into digging for better deals they don't want you to see. Don't blame sellers for actively ripping off passive consumers, they're just doing their job. Why rant about Stockholm Syndrome if you're doing nothing to escape, defy, or subvert your own submission to the dominant authority?
