Canadian cell phone choices - President's Choice cell phones?

[RetiredAt63]

Looking at retirement finances some more  ;-)

I am dropping Bell for the next billing date - I rarely watch TV (turn it on, channel surf, sigh, turn it off) and having 2 phones is one too many.  Daughter is fixing me up with Netflix for the rare times I want to watch something. My biggest loss will be Galaxie, I have such music choice  :-(    Internet is separate, Bell cannot be bothered with us rural types for that. 

My cell phone (Fido) is local calls for Ottawa but I want to switch it to local calls at home, and drop Canada wide long distance and go to provincial free long-distance.  My plan is not super expensive right now (no data, no internet) but could be less.  The contract ends in December, so I have a few retirement months to see how that goes.  And yes, I know I could cancel early, but unless there is a huge benefit to an alternate, I prefer to give it a few months at the new settings.  Cancelling Bell will realize a lot more savings.

If I don't like it, has anyone any experience with the President's Choice cell phone plans?  My phone is in good shape (Samsung, less than two years old, a smart phone but I don't do the data plan). Also, my bank (BMO) keeps enclosing cell phone plans in the statements. Anyone tried one of those?

I find talking for a long time (sister, daughter, family time) on the cell is a lot more tiring than on my house phone - has anyone tried the headsets with their cellphone? What is good/bad/worth thinking about for them?

Thanks for any feedback.

[Daley]

Heya RetiredAt63!

It sounds like you've already got a good handle on your cheaper wireless provider options in your area (if you want a brief overview of others, I do have this here), so I'm going to focus on two portions of your post that might result in far greater savings in general: your internet and home phone.

As you mentioned Netflix, it sounds like you have broadband. Are you aware of TekSavvy, and do they provide service in your part of Ontario? You might be able to save a chunk on the internet costs going that route.

Now, I know you mentioned that you think that "having two phones is one too many", and then you state that "talking... on the cell is a lot more tiring than on my house phone". Fact of the matter is, keeping two phones is going to be your most likely path to overall financial savings. Wireless phone service is expensive, full stop, so using it as an emergency communications tool while out of the house and not as your primary form of contact with the greater world will help save you money long term. If you've got solid broadband at home, replace the traditional copper loop home phone line with a VoIP provider. VOIP.ms would be an excellent option for you if you use less than say 700 total minutes a month (total cost of around $10 or less), as their Ontario phone numbers run between $0.99-1.99 a month with 1-1.49¢ a minute inbound, outbound rates for nearly the entire country at 0.52¢ a minute (you read that right), the US lower 48 at 1.05¢ a minute, and $1.50 a month for e911 (if desired). You should be able to pick up a decent ATA for under $50, can transfer your home number over for $10, and then if you're worried about missing calls while you're out, you can set up your VoIP service to ring your cellphone as well as your home phone at the same time (though that call will be billed at around 1.5-2¢ a minute on top of your wireless charges if answered on your cell. I've already linked to page two, but this should be a good primer for you on setting up a solid VoIP home phone.

Added benefit of going this route? You can keep using your comfortable home phones to make most of your calls.

Finally, depending on how you're getting that Netflix service to your television, you're likely going to use something like a Roku box or a gaming console. Streaming audio from the internet will help fill that Galaxie void and then some. You'll have everything from Acid Jazz to Zouk on tap.

[RetiredAt63]

Hi IP

Thanks for the links - I will check to see what works here (Ontario, Canada).  There are a lot more options in the US, and more options for urban Ontarians than rural ones. Except for house prices, urban living is cheaper than rural - I did both last year and I saw the differences.  How I long for Hydro-Ottawa electricity prices. 

My internet is Xplornet, basically the only reasonable rural internet provider here.  And they have really good customer service (let's here it for customer service in New Brunswick!).  Friends with IGS have mostly not liked it as much although a few prefer it.  TekSavvy shows as being available here - their unlimited package (which I think I would need if I were downloading Netflix much?)  is about the same as I pay now, once I pop in taxes and so on.

I was heading to the cell phone as main phone because of the texting - like most 20-somethings, my daughter texts me a lot instead of actually phoning.  Apparently I am considered a very cool Mom because I text back! I do Skype my friend in the US - since we are both using our computers it is free, and it is nice to be able to see her when we are chatting.

Netflix - my laptop has HDMI, my daughter thinks we can connect it directly to the TV and that takes care of it.  She has had several jobs in technical support so this will be easy for her.  I am tech-savvy enough that once she sets it up I can keep it going. 

Part of me is hesitant to cut the home phone entirely, it does work in power failures.  The alternate is to really cut back on the cell service (as you say, just for emergencies) and fork out a bit of money for better Skype phone service.

The biggest planning issue is that I have never been retired before  ;-)  My jobs have always entailed major commutes, and I use the cell phone a lot.  I may find that I hardly use it once I am more of a home-body.  A lot of people around here who work locally have cell phones and hardly use them, I always end up with their voice mail when I call. And that is when they are out of the house!  There was a time when I had no cell phone - because they had not yet been invented.  They are handy when the car has a flat tire on the highway and I need to be somewhere - that happened once, the tire was really stuck on, I couldn't get it off and the tow truck driver (big big man) could hardly get it off.  I was glad then I had the cell phone with stored numbers.

[Spudd]

I recommend pay-as-you-go once your contract expires. I'm with Rogers for my phone, and since my usage is fairly low, I only spend $10/mo on it most of the time. I went to Europe on vacation in June and used it roaming, which killed me, and I had to top up extra. But in general I get by with the $10/mo quite easily. Before i made the switch, I made a huge spreadsheet with the per-minute/per-text rates of all the providers I knew of, and I imported my actual usage from my old contract bills, and calculated how much it would cost with each of the different providers. I chose based on that. I would recommend you do the same, if you have the inclination. It's kind of fun. You can also do it for other post-paid providers as well if you think your usage might end up cheaper on a post-paid plan (e.g. $20/mo with 100 free minutes or what-have-you).

[Daley]

A lot of the Canadians on the forums here seem to swear by TekSavvy, and I figured I'd bring them up as such. If the prices are identical, however, and you're happy with who you have... stay put.

As for the texting thing, it looks like there's a good number of options available from the likes of Wind Mobile, Virgin and Petro Canada that offer "unlimited" texting packages starting at $20/month, which you probably don't need. A lot of the prepaid per use packages up there have unlimited incoming but bill outgoing texts at 10¢. Check your usage patterns on your bill, most people don't actually text near as much as they think they might.

If you're doing laptop to TV via HDMI, even better! Trust me, there's no limit to the music available online. As to the video bandwidth usage concerns, as long as you sacrifice a little visual clarity and keep your video streaming quality settings at SD video levels (480p or lower), you really don't need "unlimited" anything unless you're leaving it streaming 24-7-365 (same with the music, but it'll use a lot less bandwidth per minute). We do streaming video here over a 3Mbps connection on occasion (about 10-12 hours monthly), and it only accounts for about a third to half of our currently averaging 20-25GB/month usage. If your throughput is slower than 6Mbps, it should auto-throttle to the more bandwidth lean settings anyway.

I'd actually recommend going a traditional SIP-based VoIP provider over paying for Skype phone service for a multitude of reasons ranging from costs to proprietary lock-in to security. If you don't want to go pay-per minute, outfits like BramaTelecom do "unlimited" Canada wide calling for $15 a month. As for the power outage concerns, read the primer article I linked you to that I wrote. I cover a lot of ground, and there's ways around that for keeping service active during power outages.

Now that you're looking at retiring and being home more, take advantage of it for reducing your communications budget further. Don't pay for mobile wireless service if you don't actually need it, as switching your phone usage habits back over to a home line while at home and using VoIP should go a long way towards reducing costs.