Recently I picked up a Sony Ericsson Naite 3G phone locked to Fido (Rogers) for $150 and decided to hook up on the prepaid service. Assuming for my needs, it’s only $20 a month. It’s as cheap as mobile phone usage can get in Canada. Years ago, I used Fido prepaid but somehow stopped using it due to continued issues with the network itself (and being my cell number not being able to be called from a slew of Telus landline numbers!)
Now it’s 2010 and interestingly they decided to drop the $0.03/KB data plans altogether and came up with a $1 Unlimited Data Day Pass plan. $1 a day seems cheap on a 3G wireless network for data, however the plan only covers “on-device browsing on certified Fido/Rogers devices”. Now back to the topic of tethering: This is completely disallowed from what the prepaid plan covers… but somehow I managed to tether. It also seems like I can access most protocols like BitTorrent, IceCast, SSH and IRC. Speed wise, it’s quite poor when stacked against my Telus HSI Plus 15M connection. A speedtest.net result should pretty much explain this for itself:
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In case if you haven’t heard of what tethering is, it’s basically means using your cell phone as a modem. It’s quite a lifesaver in a lot of situations like where you can’t find free wifi you can leech off somewhere or when you need to access the internet on your laptop while you’re taking transit or something similar. However, I don’t reccomend you to tether while you’re on an airplane or you’ll probably end up like this. (I highly doubt using a cell phone on an airplane can seriously mess up the in-flight navigation systems, but my idea has been disputed by a lot of people.)