>There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line.
Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and that extra $5 brings you no benefit, the price difference is nowhere near high enough to justify the claim "people pay roughly half the national average".
My takeaway from that is that Sasktel/MTS were much cheaper for a comparable plan, but the average revenue per user is near-identical - so the effect is mostly just that Sasktel/MTS users got more data with their plans. (Which tracks to me, if you halved the revenue of a provincial-scale carrier, they'd be a huge money loser regardless of how many executive salaries got cut or efficiencies got discovered.)
Probably marketing/promos for new customers vs. actual realized, and I strongly suspect if you click through those Rogers plans you'll land on a much higher total cost.
I looked again after your response, the Rogers plans all state "for new customers only" which is probably the discrepancy. Every time I speak with my parents I'm shocked how much they're paying and I have to spend an hour renegotiating.
I live in Saskatchewan and pay ~50$ for 10GB of data/month. I'm not on a Sasktel plan, as I found a cheaper option through one of the privatized networks, however Sasktel has a new subsidiary: Lum Mobile, to compete with the cheap plans like what I'm using. I know someone who has some discount at Sasktel and pays ~50$/month for 75GB(!) of data.
When I was in toronto the guy at the hotel had a 306 (saskatchewan) phone number because it was cheaper.
Sasktel is a great provider. I have fiber to the home in my house, for instance.
Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and that extra $5 brings you no benefit, the price difference is nowhere near high enough to justify the claim "people pay roughly half the national average".