本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛For people who are casual cell-phone users (use less than 100 minutes per month) it is often much cheaper to be on pre-paid than on a monthly plan, especially with the crazy SAF fees being charged these days.

I have compiled a comparison of the Canadian pre-paid services (May 2007) based on my average monthly usage of 20 weekday minutes per month and 10 weeknight/weekend minutes (8pm+) per month.

Here are the raw monthly costs if there were no expiry dates on minutes, based on the per-minute rate for each carrier using the cheapest cost per month top-up cards:

Monthly costs for 30 minutes air-time including 911 and SAF fees:

PC Mobile : $ 6.00 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.04/min]
PetroCanada : $ 6.99 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.30/min]
Virgin Mobile : $ 7.50 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.25/min]
7-Eleven : $ 7.50 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.30/min]
Rogers PayGo : $ 8.00 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.25/min]
Fido Prepaid : $ 9.50 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.30/min]
Telus Prepaid : $12.75 (VM+CD: $18.75) [LD Rate: $0.25/min]
Solo Mobile : $12.95 (VM+CD included) [LD Rate: $0.30/min]
Bell Prepaid : $13.95 (VM+CD: $18.95) [LD Rate: $0.40/min]

VM+CD = Voice Mail and Call Display feature
Note: Rogers, Fido, PetroCanada, & 7-Eleven Prepaid use minutes when people leave VM messages for you

With my average usage, PC Mobile is the cheapest followed by PetroCanada. Telus and Bell are the only prepaid services that you have to pay a lot extra to have CallDisplay and VoiceMail. Bell and Solo also have SAF fees on their prepaid service.

Of course all the providers have minutes that expire after a certain time, so taking expiry times into account, here is the minimum monthly cost:

7-Eleven : $ 2.05 [Expires: $ 25 @ 365 days]
PetroCanada : $ 3.33 [Expires: $ 20 @ 180 days]
Rogers PayGo : $ 8.22 [Expires: $100 @ 365 days]
Virgin Mobile : $ 8.22 [Expires: $100 @ 365 days]
Fido Prepaid : $10.00 [Expires: $ 10 @ 30 days]
Telus Prepaid : $10.00 [Expires: $ 10 @ 30 days]
Solo Mobile : $12.00 [Expires: $ 30 @ 75 days]
Bell Prepaid : $12.50 [Expires: $ 25 @ 60 days]
PC Mobile : $12.50 [Expires: $ 25 @ 60 days]

Once you factor in expiry times, most of the providers become more expensive than my raw costs per month so it doesn't really matter what they charge per minute for calls. The cheapest deals are from PetroCanada and 7-Eleven with the very long expiry times your monthly costs are pretty small. Virgin is on par with Rogers.

* PC Mobile, Solo Mobile, and Virgin Mobile use Bell's CDMA network
* Fido, PetroCanada, and 7-Eleven use Roger's GSM network
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