I never use the mobile data features (web browsing and such) on my cell phone because the rates seemed ridiculously high. However, I had no idea how ridiculous it was until local tech guy and fellow Crazy Go Nuts University alumnus Tom Purves plotted mobile data rates for various countries in the graph shown below. Even in Rwanda, you can get a better deal.
Click here to see the spreadsheet for this graph.
These rates are just insult added to the injury of Canada’s terrible mobile phone offerings. They’re a joke next to America’s, which in turn are a joke next to the mobile phone options available in Europe and Asia. And don’t get me started on the “roaming” rates that Bell Mobility charges me when I’m down in Boston visiting family.
Feel free to pass this graph and its information around. I think it’s high time that we mobile phone users and people reliant on mobile data had a little chat with our mobile phone providers.
3 replies on “Help Me Rwanda! (Or: Why are Canada’s Mobile Data Rates So Damned Expensive?!)”
In Ireland, it would cost 965 euro ($1485 Canadian) to download 500mb on Vodafone’s 3G or GPRS networks. I’m assuming that’s megabytes, at any rate. And the phone options aren’t exactly stellar here, either.
Actually FIDO was really good until Rogers bought them out. They had a $50/month all you can eat.
Now I have Blackberry on the phone and 200MB / 100/month, plus I am allowed to pay for “roaming charges” when I am down in the US. When Fido was still Fido there was no roaming charge.
It’s heartbreaking really, compared to what they pay in the US. My company was thinking about getting me a phone in the US, but lately it seems the US carriers have caught on to this and cancel phones that are used more than 50% of the time outside the country.
[…] partly because mobile data charges in Canada are ridiculous […]