Cheap plan in Canada,which to choose?

[From_USA]

Hello everybody,

a friend of mine is moving to Canada with her boyfriend. She will be studying in a College and he will be working.
They will need a cellphone with a cheap plan to get in touch with each other and a few friends they have there (Belleville, Ontario). Hopefully they will make new friends soon.
Also, it would be good but not compulsory to have a cheap rate to call Italy (they will probably hook up a DSL service and use skype) and/or exchange SMS.
Or, as alternative, a data plan (if there is UMTS/High speed network) so that they can use Fring/Skype or Fring/Local number to get calls.

Can you advise on any reasonable/fair plan (also postpaid)?

thank you

[PhotoJim]

We have UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA in the major centres (pretty much any city over 150K population).

As for plans, it's tough to give specific advice, but the GSM providers are:

http://www.rogers.com
http://www.fido.ca (runs on Rogers network)

The CDMA providers in Ontario are:

Select your province | TELUS Mobility
http://www.bell.ca
Virgin Mobile Canada (runs on Bell's network)

They are adopting GSM but it will not be running until next year.

Wind Mobile is coming online this year but may not have coverage in Belleville until next year. They will be using UMTS 1700.

Jim

[VladS]

For a temporary resident with no canadian credit history getting a postpaid account can be quite difficult.

Solo Mobile (owned by Bell Canada) offers prepaid packages similar to their monthly plans.

[bylo]

An alternative to Rogers/Fido are SpeakOut and Petro-Canada Mobility. Both are operated by MVNO ztar and run on the Rogers GSM network. Neither offer data plans, however. The main advantage they have, especially SpeakOut, is that all airtime topups last for 365 days. If you already have a 850/1900 phone, you can buy SIMs from people on the forum in the first link, typically for ~$25.
The Unofficial FAQ | The Unofficial 7-Eleven Speak Out Wireless Canada Consumer Page
Speak Out
Prepaid Cell Phones — Petro-Canada Mobility Prepaid Cell Phone Plan
SpeakOut phones and airtime are sold at 7-11 convenience stores. I don't think there are any in Belleville, but there are some in Toronto, about 180km away, as well as Oshawa, about 120km away. PCM phones and airtime are available at all Petro-Canada gasoline stations. There are several in Belleville. You can also get airtime at their website. However, with PCM you have to buy $100 in airtime to get 365 days expiration.


As for DSL service, I recommend TekSavvy. They wholesale Bell Canada's infrastructure but charge less than Bell and provide much better customer service.

Note that in Canada almost all ISPs throttle BitTorrent traffic, at least in the evening, and impose bandwidth quotas, as low as a few GB in Bell's case (but 200GB for TekSavvy.) There are rumours that some ISPs (notably Rogers cable) also throttle VoIP, however I haven't seen any conclusive evidence of this.