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Why is it so hard to get real Pay-As-You-Go mobile plans in Canada?
(discuss.tchncs.de)
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Its the good ol' telco monopoly. Doesn't help that our population density is basically nothing. We're the second biggest country by land mass, but have about the same population as California.
I'm not sure who we need to pressure to get better service for the money...
Yeah, population density gets blamed a lot — and while it explains some issues, it doesn't justify:
The Big 3 hide behind geography while keeping margins high and MVNOs out.
Who to pressure? Well...... it's basically no one at the moment.
Not asking for freebies — just flexible, fair options that reflect how people actually use mobile services.
Population density isn't a rural issue, it's a fixed costs issue.
The companies are required to maintain a larger total network of towers and everyone has to pay for that, which means city users are subsidizing rural networks quite significantly.
I'm not saying the Big 3 aren't taking advantage of the situation, but they do have a legitimate issue.
Totally fair — fixed infrastructure costs are real, and urban users likely do subsidize the broader network. But even within cities, the lack of options (like true PAYG or small data tiers) feels unnecessarily rigid.
The issue isn’t solely about cost — it’s how little flexibility or fairness is built into the plans, even for light users.
Allowing light or limited plans means that they don't have the revenue to cover the costs.
The actual usage on the network is functionally irrelevant at this point, providers don't save any money if people don't use their phones as much these days. It's almost all fixed costs which means that plans are essentially just fixed at this point too. Price points still exist only for advertising and marketing purposes, the companies are totally satisfied just getting everyone to a minimum value. The whole industry has just become a commodity but with 100% fixed costs.
It's not like they're raking in stupid profits either, TELUS only had a net income of around 5% of their revenue last year.