Regarding overage charges, I would be genuinely shocked if anybody, including a minor provider, has overage under $10/GB, seeing as by your own admission, even your standard rate exceeds $5/GB. Rogers overages are $70/GB, Bell is $110-120/GB, Telus is a whopping $130/GB. If overage charges are under the normal rate, then that's not an overage, that's pay-as-you-go.
Are you talking about data only, or full phone service? Perhaps our calculations look different.
These plans includes: unlimited voice calling, texting, long distance, voicemail, call display, 5 hours of unlimited data per month (great for using a hotspot) and that amount of data.
The basic phone plan is about $30, so you're actually paying about $3 per GB. Overage is an admittedly ridiculous $15/GB.
This is Fido, owned by Rogers, obviously a major carrier. The standard plans aren't quite as good ($75 for 10GB), but there's always some kind of promotion going on. It's not wonderful when you see what some other countries are paying, but we're in a far better place than even a few years ago.
Yeah, in France a basic SIM phone plan with 50mb data is something thrown in for free as a part of their internet/cable/DVRs which is $30/mo (incl tax) for the first year and then $65, but it’s so competitive that you just need to call in or switch.
Text/calls are increasingly over data. You’re getting terrible value for $30 for what is 100mb.
I know providers like to think that SMS or voice calls are a big extra, but 95%+ of mine these days are over data.
Well, if you are counting overage charges I guess.
My (national) provider has an all-in, bring-your-own-device plan with 9GB of data (recently with a 2GB bonus, for a total of 11GB) for under $60/month. I'm sure the competitors are similar. So, while not perfect, it's not as onerous as you describe.