Public Mobile is Telus/Bell, but it certainly seems that the discount brands get lowest priority network access these days - I'm on Koodo and even with five bars the latency seems high.
I switched my Public mobile to LTE only. 5G was sucky but honestly I don’t know anyone who needs faux 5G
LTE has been more reliable than my Telus 5G+ I switched from
TELUS has come out with some relatively decent BYOP plans to the point I might consider switching when it's time for a new phone. Seems the flanker brands (Koodo, Virgin, Fido) have stopped offering 5g in their latest round of plans. I've been with Virgin for years and have always been happy but their latest plans are less than appealing and in reality are downgrades from what I have with them now. My daughter was looking to change her plan, we contacted Virgin and they had nothing to offer other than the single plan on their website. So she switched. And a week later they come back with a new offer that while it is better than she had it still doesn't come close to touching what Public Mobile is offering.
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5G is such a waste. The coverage in this city is so ####ty (in the north at least) that you can rarely get on it, and when you do the speeds aren't a noticeable enough boost over LTE to justify the increased battery drain. We'd need to see a lot more telecom infrastructure improvements here to make 5G anything more than a marketing gimmick IMO
5G is such a waste. The coverage in this city is so ####ty (in the north at least) that you can rarely get on it, and when you do the speeds aren't a noticeable enough boost over LTE to justify the increased battery drain. We'd need to see a lot more telecom infrastructure improvements here to make 5G anything more than a marketing gimmick IMO
Completely agree. Can't comment on the coverage, seems pretty solid in the south but the speeds I totally agree with. My office is within 200 yards of two cell towers. Standing outside with both towers clearly in site and I barely get above 100 Mb/s most days. It's really nothing to write home about.
TELUS has come out with some relatively decent BYOP plans to the point I might consider switching when it's time for a new phone. Seems the flanker brands (Koodo, Virgin, Fido) have stopped offering 5g in their latest round of plans. I've been with Virgin for years and have always been happy but their latest plans are less than appealing and in reality are downgrades from what I have with them now. My daughter was looking to change her plan, we contacted Virgin and they had nothing to offer other than the single plan on their website. So she switched. And a week later they come back with a new offer that while it is better than she had it still doesn't come close to touching what Public Mobile is offering.
Don't know when Koodo made that switch but I signed up for a plan with them that was supposedly 4g only. Yet here I am with 90GB for $45 and 5g, go figure.
Lots of people on Reddit saying the same thing.
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Completely agree. Can't comment on the coverage, seems pretty solid in the south but the speeds I totally agree with. My office is within 200 yards of two cell towers. Standing outside with both towers clearly in site and I barely get above 100 Mb/s most days. It's really nothing to write home about.
Are you with Telus or one of their flanker brands? A few months ago their data quality went down the toilet and it's never recovered.
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Don't know when Koodo made that switch but I signed up for a plan with them that was supposedly 4g only. Yet here I am with 90GB for $45 and 5g, go figure.
Yeah, I'm also with Koodo on a 4G plan and my phone shows it's getting 5G a lot of the time.
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Yeah, I'm also with Koodo on a 4G plan and my phone shows it's getting 5G a lot of the time.
But you won't get actual 5G speeds. Your phone shows the icon because you have 5G enabled in the mobile carrier settings and it's connecting to a network that supports 5G, but Koodo or any other carrier selling 4G plans will limit the speeds to around 100mbps
They want you to spend more money for the 5G plans to get higher speeds (250mbps advertised), but it's not worth it at all due to the terrible coverage. And honestly, even if you could get real 5G speeds I wouldn't see the point. What would you be using your phone for at 250mbps that you couldn't at 100mbps? It's not like the jump from 3G to LTE, which was around a 30x speed increase. 100mbps is plenty fast enough for any regular mobile use, even 4K streaming
Last edited by Hemi-Cuda; 03-19-2025 at 11:21 PM.
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Yeah, I've never bothered to test it. Whatever speed I'm getting is good enough for what I use it for.
Well if you don't have a 5G plan then it's actually detrimental to keep it enabled on your phone as it usually increases battery drain. You'd be better off restricting your phone to LTE networks in the SIM options
Just for context to run full 4k stream you need around 40mbps speed. That is as bandwidth intensive as it gets. So as others have mentioned Spotify, Teams, YouTube, all will be far far less. I think teams needs like 15mbps at its extreme max, around 5mbps at the minimum for example.
I have 75GB 5G $35 with Public and zero chance I will ever hit that unless I use it as my home connection.
If looking for a good plan get the cheapest that has around 20GB of data. These 75, 100, 150 GB plans are a complete waste.
I had the $25 Shaw Mobile plan for 27GB which after the Rogers purchase got grandfathered in for 5 years. 27GB has been plenty for me, will be sad to see that plan go as I get US data as well included. Though I guess I might not use it for the rest of the time I have that plan...
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On freedom with wife and mine phones. $35/month each for all the data you will ever need.
But…. 100% of every phone call cuts off midway though. 15 years ago cells were better.
Despite the aneurysm I almost had last year due to the $40k bill from the APEGA plan, it’s kind of hard to beat. I don’t even bother to use wifi anymore.
