2012 Bargain Cell Phone Plan Rates- Wind, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Koodo and Fido Cheap Student Cell Phone Plans

Submitted by Jafario on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 19:58

Cheap Cell Phone Plan Comparisons

Alright, time again to either renew your commitment with your cellular service provider or to take it elsewhere. To help you take a load off of your to do list, here are the plans offered through Wind, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Koodo and Fido.

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Wind

It is about time consumers begin to strongly consider Wind as a viable alternative to Rogers, Bell and Telus; I am not strictly speaking of the Toronto city dwellers either. When considering the companies network area growth of over 100% since their inception in 2009 you will notice their geographic coverage plans are ambitious, much like their market intentions. This growth trend does not appear to be a fad either. Their coverage map shows a planned expansion of an additional 75% including some new market areas such as Abbotsford, BC and Bolton, ON.

Wind offers $0 phones with no contract commitments. The way it works: each month they will apply a credit equivalent to 10% of your payment and apply it to your Wind Tab. For example, if you are on their $25 plan, 10% of your plan cost (does not include taxes or extra charges) which is $2.50, will go to pay off your outstanding Wind Tab balance. They also promise to pay off any remaining balance after 3 years.

Koodo also advertises the exact same offer; however, Koodo is a subsidiary of Telus and I have heard of several cases of customers being screwed over by the City Fido plan after being told it would bring down their monthly bill. It turns out they were incorectly informed by Fido agents that they were within the City Fido calling area zone. Needless to say their bills did not go down. Some of these customers were even shown a map which illustrated without a doubt that they were within the zone. Fido continued to charge these customers on the City Fido Plan while the patrons racked up consistent 3 digit bills because every call they made was outside the City Fido zone. When they went to Fido to resolve the issue they were told that they should not have been offered the plan since they were not within the City Fido zone. At this point Fido had what the customers claimed to be an entirely different map from what they were originally shown. This map clearly illustrated how some of these customers were miles away from the zone while others were on the fringe which does not qualify you for the unlimited City Fido plan; not even a little bit. After acknowledging their mistake, Fido was still unwilling to reimburse the customers for the unnecessary increase in their monthly bills. Until Fido figures out what exactly their City Fido covers I do not advise anyone living outside of the GTA to purchase a City Fido plan. Remember, the City Fido zone has nothing to do with cell tower coverage; Fido/Koodo already have southern Ontario covered with signal. City Fido is a zone they can expand simply by drawing these theoretical lines out a bit further to help out their customers which they initially f@#$'d over.

WIND Plans

Wind has recently made their plans quite simple. There are only 2 options; one of which will satisfy a majority of consumers.

(*)The differences between the two plans are marked by the asterisk.

Option 1:

$25 Plan:Unlimited local talk and text + 100mB of Data

-Unlimited Wind to Wind
-Unlimited incoming calls
-Unlimited outgoing local calls*
-US calling and texting = 20c a minute and 15c per text (unlimited for $10 a month)
-Outgoing picture MMS 20c per message
-$5 for every 100mB of data you go over*
-Includes- Caller ID, Call Waiting, Conference Call, Missed Call Alerts, Call Forwarding.
-Free access to WindWorld (m.windmobile.ca): Free Facebook Zero, News, Weather, Ringtones

Check the bottom of this Wind section to reference "away" and US zone charges.

Option 2:

$40 Plan:Unlimited local talk, text and Data

-Unlimited Wind to Wind
-Unlimited incoming calls
-Unlimited outgoing calls Canada Wide*
-Unlimited Data*
-US calling and texting = 20c a minute and 15c per text (unlimited for $10 a month)
-Outgoing picture MMS 20c per message
-Includes- Caller ID, Call Waiting, Conference Call, Missed Call Alerts, Call Forwarding.
-Free access to WindWorld (m.windmobile.ca): Free Facebook Zero, News, Weather, Ringtones

Check the bottom of this Wind section to reference "away" and US zone charges.

Rates

Data

$1 for 1mB (1mB is roughly equal to 80 website pages)

Away Minutes In Canada

20cents a minute - When Outside A WIND Home Zone Receive Or Make A Call to Anywhere in Canada No Extra Charges

Away Texts

15cents per text - Send a Text Anywhere Inside Canada or U.S. While You're Outside A WIND Home Zone

Canada/ U.S. Long Distance Minute

20cents a minute

International Roaming

Last year Wind started providing 1 Simple Rate For Each Of The 200 Countries They Have Under Their Global Coverage

*Since Wind has joined the cellular network provider market they are my preference considering the fact that they are affordable and not based on contracts. Koodo has since dropped contracts and continually illustrates how much they like to borrow Wind's princing plans and offers. I would really like to see the other providers like Rogers and Bell begin to drop contracts and user fee's as well as their pricing.

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Rogers Cell Phone Plans

The plans are posted incrementally by price.

Already included: Call Waiting, Group Calling, Call Forwarding.
Additional Opt-In Features: WhoCalledTM, Call ManagerTM.
Additional Minutes: 45¢ per minute.

Voice and Messaging Plans

$32.35 /month

-150Minutes
- UNLIMITED from 9 PM