yg17 said:
If a mobile provider here tried to make people pay for incoming calls they'd get run out of town by a very angry mob. It's the one thing I will say for our telecommunications systems - the mobile phone system is very well done.
Funny, I find Australian mobile phone deals to be horrifyingly expensive, and I think the Canadian deals are much better, even if incoming calls are charged.
The only......yes, "only"........good thing about Aussie mobile phone networks is Optus' pre-paid deal. If I buy a $30 prepaid charge card, I get 300 free minutes that I can use to call anybody with an Optus prepaid card as well. Every foreign person uses it. Every single one of my friends uses Optus prepaid, so I basically make calls for free. I have around 450 free minutes accumulated on my phone.
However, for $30 Cdn per month, I'd get 200 minutes and unlimited nighttime minutes (or weekends, depending on which I chose), but I'd have to pay a $6 per month fee for some reason. Still not bad at all, because in Oz, making calls on my phone is just incredibly expensive. I'm sorry, but $0.40 for every 30 second call, plus $0.18 (don't know exact value) connection fee? Fido was around $0.20-$0.30 for a 1 minute call, and I was on prepaid in Canada as well several years ago.
And if that's not good, then:
City Fido. Since Rogers bought Fido, this deal has become worse. It used to be $45 for UNLIMITED CALLING AND RECEIVING!! However, it's still a good deal.