Freedom Mobile (was: Wind Mobile)

[JaffX]

If you live on the edge of the towers or places with pretty bad coverage you'll get hit with roaming charges. I was with wind with the $35 plan but every month I kept getting charged an extra $5-10 due to roaming charges. Made the switch to Fido and I couldn't be happier.

[nzwasp]

How is fido's data plan compared to wind though?

I just changed from Telus (ex employee) to wind and wind is shit. Although im using wireless whereever possible which I never did with Telus.

[benyl]

Fido uses Rogers towers

[JaffX]

Originally posted by nzwasp
How is fido's data plan compared to wind though?

I just changed from Telus (ex employee) to wind and wind is shit. Although im using wireless whereever possible which I never did with Telus.

I did the bring your own phone thing for 2 gb of data for $65/month. 2 gb is enough for me and it's LTE speeds. The 5 gb of data with wind is nice but the speed was just terrible.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by nzwasp
How is fido's data plan compared to wind though?

I just changed from Telus (ex employee) to wind and wind is shit. Although im using wireless whereever possible which I never did with Telus.

Telus/Koodo/Bell is best. Roger/Fido is second. Wind is distance 3rd. No idea if Mobolicity has improved after Rogers bought them.

Wind is slowly pricing themselves out. I understand $35/mth with an inferior network and hope it will improves. But they just don't have the capital to do so.

Originally posted by JaffX


I did the bring your own phone thing for 2 gb of data for $65/month. 2 gb is enough for me and it's LTE speeds. The 5 gb of data with wind is nice but the speed was just terrible.

Koodo has 3GB right now at $57/mth for byod.

[relyt92]

I'm coming up on a year with Wind. I'm very whelmed by it. The pricing is good, but the speeds are fairly crappy and there's sometimes delays on getting/receiving texts. I'm starting to question whether the $30 difference is worth it.

[revelations]

Koodo/Wind/Fido - is there an obvious choice in Calgary you guys would choose as of right now ..... for 40-50$/mo with 5GB data?

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by revelations
Koodo/Wind/Fido - is there an obvious choice in Calgary you guys would choose as of right now ..... for 40-50$/mo with 5GB data?

Does such plan exist without doing the SK/MB port for Koodo and Fido?

I still say Wind is it if you can make it work. I get 3Mbps connection 90% of time within the city (NW, NE, West, Beltline). I roam probably 5% of the time and roaming is cheap.

But if you work downtown core or in large buildings or edge of city, your experience will not be good with Wind.

[topher91]

So, with the new upgrades done to their network, how is the speed and coverage now?

I've read many reviews from last year and most were negative in regards to network speed and coverage.

Their plans sound so appealing and I'm trying to decide weather or not to switch to them.

Thanks!

[Xtrema]

I used to avg 3-5Mbps, now 10-15Mbps. It's definitely better but no 40+Mbps of LTE of big 3.

City limit boundary has extended a bit. The dead zone in Hamptons is gone. Nose hill remain to have dead spots.

I'm happy as a customer for $35 a month, same price right now if BYOD. I have no problem paying a bit on data roam, 90% of time I'm in WIND coverage zones.

WIND coverage is good with GVA and GTA. But coverage in TO downtown is oversubscribed, hopefully it will get better when they upgrade network there.

Shaw may have injected some financial muscle to the business, don't expect them to put up a fight with the big 3 or any plan to go to 5G.

[topher91]

I'm on telus now, I only get 10-15mbs!

Sounds pretty good to me.

[revelations]

I have no issues to report, before or after any upgrades.

I stream YT all over the city on my journey just fine. Wind throttles YT anyway so any improvement in bandwidth wouldn't be noticeable there.

I cant see why I need 10+ mbs when I don't do massive file moves or downloads while on the road. Emails, attachments and websites load just fine on the existing speeds.

I'd gladly pay less to NOT use LTE

[relyt92]

I'd tell you the speed I currently get, but even though I'm on 4G my data isn't currently loading. It's generally decent enough in the city, good enough to stream music for the most part. Certainly isn't blazing fast for much of anything though. For the price I can't complain even with the lost/slow data at times, and the random delays texts seem to get once in a while.

[n1zm0]

Edit, double post

[n1zm0]

Originally posted by relyt92
I'd tell you the speed I currently get, but even though I'm on 4G my data isn't currently loading. It's generally decent enough in the city, good enough to stream music for the most part. Certainly isn't blazing fast for much of anything though. For the price I can't complain even with the lost/slow data at times, and the random delays texts seem to get once in a while.

Originally posted by Xtrema
I'm happy as a customer for $35 a month, same price right now if BYOD. I have no problem paying a bit on data roam, 90% of time I'm in WIND coverage zones.

Both of these statements are exactly why I'm still with Wind, virtually no data limit, streaming spotify, navigation, even twitch in Source feed quality I have no issues. I would say I've encountered slow zones but not dead as of late. It does great for what I need it to do and I'd say a definite increase in speed since the upgrades but only in core heavily supported zones.

SMS media/text works fine but depending on the app sometimes it doesn't transmit messages and you have to manually retry to send.

Also it seems to idle on 3G then switches to HSPA+ when I know it's trying to TX or RX something, it never happened before the upgrades

[schocker]

Saw this article yesterday with kind of pros and cons of wind with the new networks
http://www.androidcentral.com/wind-mobile-worth-it

Future upgrades

There is good news on the horizon, though: Wind is systematically replacing all of its old network hardware with newer, faster equipment provided by Nokia. Upgrades have already been completed in Vancouver and Calgary, and are moving eastward. These improvements have positively affected coverage, reliability and speed.
Towards LTE

Toward the end of 2016, Wind Mobile plans to launch an LTE network based on AWS-3 spectrum it acquired in one of the government's most recent auctions. Combined with some of the AWS-1 spectrum Wind plans to repurpose for LTE, the company should be in a good place to compete with Rogers, Bell, and Telus in its home markets. However, because the AWS-3 standard is still relatively new, there are no supported devices yet; Wind will have to wait until at least the beginning of 2017 for new products to launch with support for Band 66, which unifies AWS-1 and AWS-3 under a single standard.

I will probably be interested once this all start rolling out.

[phreezee]

The upgrades will have growing pains. After years of reliable service, my wife had a 2 month disruption where she would be roaming as soon as we entered our community.

[topher91]

Originally posted by phreezee
The upgrades will have growing pains. After years of reliable service, my wife had a 2 month disruption where she would be roaming as soon as we entered our community.

Which community?

I figured, if I get in now while service is OK, then when they are comparable to big 3, I may be able to keep a decent plan.

[msommers]

That does sound like great news for Wind. Curious if they'll just jack up the price and we'll have 'the big 4'

[nzwasp]

Seems better now that the upgrades were completed, I am still on wind away in my basement though. During the upgrades it was hit and miss outside (aspen area) whether I was in the zone or not. It has definetly forced me to use free wifi whenever I can find it - when I was with Telus (company phone) I would never bother with putting my phone on wifi. However now that I have to pay for my own phone the cost for the service is alright. My wife also uses wind but she has a iphone which their network only supports on 3g and she hates it. I have suggested we switch to one of the big 3 but she doesnt want to pay $50 more for better performance.