What's with the lack of flexibility in Canadian mobile offerings?

[Frogging101]

I love my Public Mobile plan. I get 4GB of data (LTE data, even; when I signed up they didn't sell it separately from 3G) for $75 every 90 days. No talk, no text, just what I need and no more.

I'm not sure when it changed, but you can't get that or anything like it for that price anymore, not even from Public Mobile. There is so little flexibility. Very few providers even allow you to build a plan without talk/text. Public Mobile is the only one I know, and now its 90 day plans only offer either 3GB or 6GB, and the 3GB option is 50% more expensive than the 4GB I have now. What happened? Services should improve over time, not get worse. PM still offers unparallelled flexibility (which unfortunately is not saying much in this industry), but nevertheless even it seems to have become a little more constrained over time, and nobody else seems to be making progress on this either.

[srlawren]

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@MoreYummy wrote:

They keep on changing the plans.  Now this brand is trying to push 3G speed plan.  

@MoreYummy well in fairness, most of the brands update their plans fairly regualrly, espeically time-limited promo plans.  

As for the "3G" speed....well... yes I agree it's unfortunate.  They are definitely trying to de-emphasize the LTE plans, which kind of makes sense given the overlap with Koodo prepaid offereings which are full-speed LTE plans.  

[MoreYummy]

They keep on changing the plans.  Now this brand is trying to push 3G speed plan.  

[Frogging101]

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@JL9 wrote:

Ahh ok. Was it 4GB for the whole 90 days or 4GB for each 30 day period?

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4GB per 90 days. Average of 1.2GB every 30 days.

[torontokris]

@Frogging101 One word oligopoly

the big 3 have bought out all the smaller competition so it appears there are many choices but there are only 3 and other smaller ones like freedom/wind if in your area. 

Even mts was bought out. Expect more of the same. Be happy with your plan or wait for a promo and sign on with that (like the promo now Canada wide just with throttled speeds). Least pm has rewards like loyalty community etc. with rewards I’m about same as you $75 per 90 days with talk text 4gb LTE data

If Rogers had its way we’d all be paying $100/month.

[JL9]

Ahh ok. Was it 4GB for the whole 90 days or 4GB for each 30 day period?

[Frogging101]

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@JL9 wrote:

When did you get that deal?

January 2016. IIRC, it was the regular price for data on PM at the time

[JL9]

When did you get that deal?

[mtfolks]

@srlawren With how much money they’re hemorrhaging trying to create a slightly less terrible network I wouldn’t hold my breath for Freedom being an affordable option in the future. Eventually they’ll launch an expensive, premium Shaw mobility brand but even then I expect Freedom pricing will fall in line with the Koodos or Fidos. As it is, with their current price hikes and still bad network coverage they’re worse value than they’ve possibly ever been IMO. 

[srlawren]

@Frogging101 you can blame the utter lack of a real viable competitor to the Big 3 for our mobile market.  Freedom may one day get there, but I fear they will just fall in line and turn into the Big 4 instead.  You can watch the changes as they happen--one of the big 3 makes a change to make something more expensive, the other 2 follow suit usually within days or slightly longer.  There just isn't enough competition, and all the big 3 seem to care about is increasing their ARPU every fiscal quarter so the investors are happy.  This is the unfortunate reality of our mobile marketplace here.

[mtfolks]

Telus wants their subscribers to be on their post paid plans either direct thru Telus or Koodoo. Rather than have PM be amazing value they’ve changed it to be directly comparable to some of the other budget brands in both price and service. I’m not thrilled about it either. So it goes...