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Cell: Cheapest cell phone deal (in Ontario anyway)
Fri, 19 Sep 2008

We all know cell phone plans are bad. Really bad. And doubly so in Canada.. but here is the best way to go for a cheap 'emergency batphone' approach.

First, lets break down the norm or what I assume is the norm..

A monthly plan is probably about $20 base for most people; my plan is some $20/200 thing, but I imagine whatever airtime and feature set the sweet spot is about $20 per plan. <conspiracy whisper>I'll tell you why I think that in a second</conspiracy> Furthermore, there is the bogus system access fee which is about $6 or $7 per month, plus any features, and the inevitable taxes. So we're all probably on the dole for about $30 per month, or more. (And on the phone when I was bugging them about the system access fee, the droid did in fact tell me it was to pay the government for 911 support, and of course its come out over the years this is not true. Thankfully, some cell resellers like Koodu are ditching that fee.)

I think this is the telco sweet spot, since consider.. if they can get you for about $30/mo 'or so', thats about $360 per year 'or so'; ie: About a buck a day, which just seems to convenient a number, no?

Pay as you go

I never much looked into pay as you go plans since essentially you put money into a credit pool and any airtime you use is charged against that. If you run out, fine, you can top it up.. but the airtime costs more than you'd like. If you don't run out however, the real kicker is they 'expire' the credit - usually after only 30 days. Absolutely territory we don't want to tread in as consumers. So if you're kicking in $20/month of expiry cash, you're not really ahead much on the regular monthly plans. But to note -- on pay as you go you get some free features (call display etc), and you have no system access fee (an immediate savings of $6/$7 per month). The big negative is the expiring money, and if you get voicemail then the voicemail counts against your minutes (ouch!), so usually you don't want voicemail on such a plan.

The deal however is .. Rogers will sell you a $100 voucher for airtime, that will expire after one year. They don't seem to advertise it much, and its REALLY hard to find on their website. I only managed to locate it by accident from a few links in obscure old forum postings. In the end, any Rogers Wireless store should be able to sell you a $100 voucher and apply it to your account. They want to sell you "top ups" instead, which always last no more than 30 days. But the "$100 voucher" (that exact phrase :) is good for a year.

Working it out..

So now consider; $100 per year.. thats what, $8/month? Thats a hell of a lot better than $30 a month, but you don't get as much of course. Hence why this is a fantastic 'batphone' emergency plan, or for people who don't yak a lot.

You can pick from a series of plans, but in this case for an emergency phone for someone I selected .. 25c/min for the first 5 mins of a call, then 15c/min thereafter. Not too bad. All told we could say the $100 will get about 400 minutes of airtime on short calls, or possible maybe 500 minutes if it goes awhile. No system access fee, no weird taxes, no paying for features..

I mean, $8/month for cell phone. Nice.

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