It’s no secret that using too much data on your cell phone plan can cost you.
A recent study shows that Canadians are paying much more compared to more than 200 other nations, and that isn’t sitting well with some Edmontonians.
“I have a $350 bill for one month, I went over 10 gigs and it wasn’t even that much,” resident Lee Savage said.
“There’s times when we did go over it.. and we couldn’t pay it, it started to add up really fast,” resident Jasslyne Saskatchewan said.
British website http://www.cable.co.uk surveyed 228 countries to find the lowest average cost of one gigabyte of data, using American dollars.
It found that Canadians rank 209th on average paying $12.55. Americans pay about two-thirds of what we do and the further we go, the numbers significantly drop. Australians pay 68 cents. The lowest is India averaging just six cents per gigabyte.
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While it would be nice to pay that little, one telecommunication consultant says it’s not that simple.
“People may want to trade for the prices paid in India but I don’t think most people would want to trade the salary they’re receiving for salaries received in India,” Mark Goldberg said.
Goldberg says population is another aspect that is factored in.
“So if we could trade for those kind of population densities, prices would be lower,” Goldberg said.
He says he finds the methods in this study flawed and points to other studies that show Canadians are getting what they pay for considering our population, economy and country size.
“Canadian mobile prices are among the world’s most affordable while they’re also among the fastest and best networks,” Goldberg said.
Little comfort, for those struggling to make ends meet, Saskatchewan said.
“We’re students so it’s hard to keep up with the bills when you have to go to school and then you have all these other bills to pay as well.”
“I honestly feel we pay too much,” Savage said.
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