This is a topic of conversations a lot, and just last night I was saying how I missed being on Verizon back in the states. Sure, it’s a CDMA[wiki] network, but living in Iowa, GSM[wiki] isn’t your best option unless you never travel outside of major population centers or venture away from the interstate highways that crisscross the state.
For me, it was that last point that made Verizon a good deal. The coverage reached where I needed it to, the cost of the package deals were friendly to my income, and the data plans of their “In” network were pretty sweet. There was never hesitation to chat for a long time with friends who were also on Verizon, plus I could send photos to the same people at no charge. They also had a super nice online presence that I could track my account on, all the way down to the last call I received being updated on their website within minutes.
Plans like that simply do not exist here, at least where all of this is included for just $60 a month. In fact, it still boggles my mind that you have to play extra for caller I.D. or voice mail. In fact, I think it’s rare to find the two packaged together. And data plans? It gets worse. Text messaging is just the start.
Below is a chart that Boris made regarding the cost of moving 1 GB of data through the various competitors in the country. This includes things like sending pictures, videos, emails, files, and and anything else you can zip through your wireless phone. Granted that all the data is valid, and I have a lot of faith in Boris that it is, the results are eye opening.
I hate playing the grumpy American role, but the costs for using a cellphone in Canada should hardly be this expensive. I’ve heard someone tell me before that some of the highest costs in the world of owning and operating a cellphone exists in this country, and this certainly rings true now. I thought I was just being picky.
The whole mobile phone business in the USA (and apparently, Canada) is a rip off. I am paying for phone service for expat daughter in the USA at around $75 per month. Here in Chiner, my cell phone coverage costs me about $50 and that is with numerous international calls to the USA and elsewhere in Asia. A text message which costs 10 cents in the USA costs me 1 cent here.
To top it off, the whole deal with phones and how you acquire them is brutal. Here in Asia, cellphones are top notch and you can buy any phone you want…and then just slide in your sim card. In the USA, you have to take the locked phone from the company, which they give to you for ‘free’ or at a reduced priced. Well, that price is worked back into the monthly cost of the phone, ten-fold. I find it very frustrating when you cannot even buy a simple sim card for a phone you already have..but yet here in Asia, you can buy a sim card out of a vending machine.
To top it off, the service that you recieve in the USA is brutal…weak signals, cut offs, etc. In Hong Kong, you can talk on a mobile phone anywhere. Including on the subway in the tunnel that goes under the harbor.
It’s a scam that people just don’t realize is happening to them…but now you do!
The summer of 2000 that I spent in Japan was a bit of an eye opener to this in a hindsight sort of way. So many people have phones, and now they are pushing the technology with video chat over cell phones.
Then there were the boxes upon boxes of really awesome cellphones, but used completely up. You could by them for $10US and they would still work, but no one would buy them because they could get something for not much more that was new. And with how fast the tech changes, why buy old?
US is brutal, but now that I’m in Canada, I appreciate what I used to have.
drivers for cell phone/wireless device costs in Canada:
– low competition – only 3 carriers
– low user base – CDN population is the size of California’s, of which only about 60% use cell phones. Adoption elsewhere in the world averages in the 90% range.
That’s why I communicate almost exclusively through telegraphs these days.