Note: This was originally written in 2021. Since that time, Public Mobile has changed their rewards program to a points system, and other little bits have taken place in regards to the competition (like Rogers buying Shaw). While I updated a few areas below, keep in mind that constant changes will result in increased inaccuracies as time goes by. I strongly suggest you double-check anything important to you on the PM/Rogers/Bell/etc websites.

Let’s start with the referral bit and then move on to why I decided to move to Public Mobile as opposed to the competition.

Assuming you’ve already got your SIM, are in the process of activating your account, and are looking for a quick and easy code to receive your $10 discount/bonus, the code is:

40KKZ9

(the 2nd character is the number zero by the way!)

They’ve updated their website since that screenshot was taken, so the interface you see will look a bit different.

Once you’ve completed the setup, the referral code above will also show up in your transaction summary with a note that “Your $10 referral discount will be applied to your account starting on your next cycle renewal date.”

Essentially, you pay full price for month 1, and receive the $10 credit for the renewal date (I also received $2 bonus for attaching a credit card for auto top-up, but the program has changed since then to 5% back in points). In my case, my top-up bonus was added to my account almost immediately, and the $10 credit was added to my account in roughly 24 hours with a corresponding text message that stated “Thank you for activating with Public Mobile. You’ve received a $10 credit! Please check the Transaction History or your account balance to see your $10 credit”.

With that out of the way…

Why I chose Public Mobile – Some Background That Began the Journey

I actually use my phone as little as possible. To give you a rough idea as to how little, before moving to Public Mobile, using $100/365-day top-ups and topping up before expiry, I had hundreds of dollars of unused credit that had accumulated.

Unfortunately, Bell bought my provider (MTS) and… well… if you’re familiar with Bell Canada you won’t be surprised to learn that things went downhill. Sure enough within a couple years they dropped the $100/365 day top-up option.

Initially I was going to move to Rogers who I’d used many years ago. However, the Rogers prepaid activation on their website would not allow me to activate a standard $100/365 day pay per use option. The only options it gave were for a $180/year annual, $65/monthly, and $50/monthly plan! I tried logging into my old account to see if there was another route to add a SIM, but my Rogers online account appeared to be pretty buggered up.

Not off to a great start!

I started looking around for alternatives: either another $100/year option or something in the $10-15/month range. None of the $100/year options matched what I’d previously had with MTS, so I decided I’d look towards the $10-15/month range, with stipulations being that I’d have to get a little data with it, and would need the ability to roam in the US periodically at a reasonable cost. Update: what I found back then in the $10-15/month range is now $19/month and while I wasn’t forced off my cheaper plan, I’m using $19 as a baseline moving forward and have updated the plans below.

The options: Public Mobile vs Chatr vs Lucky Mobile vs Freedom Mobile

I looked into Canada’s main discount brands. For those unaware, they’re owned by our major carriers and generally run on their networks:

• Public Mobile (owned by Telus)
• Chatr (owned by Rogers)
• Lucky Mobile (owned by Bell)
• Freedom Mobile (owned by Quebecor)

…I’ll hit these in reverse order.

Note: I strive to make periodic updates, but comparisons are subject to error – before jumping on a provider you should double-check the offerings.

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Freedom Mobile

When I originally looked into Freedom, they were a little less competitive. They’ve improved quite a bit since, and “Freedom vs Public Mobile” is a fairly common question these days. I’ve updated the below.

Freedom (originally known as “Wind Mobile”) is an oddball in that it’s not owned by the “Big 3”. The current owner is Quebecor who appears to have been improving their offerings. Do note that at the time of this writing, they only offer services to people located in BC/AB/MB/ON. Here are a few basics:

1. There is an interesting situation in terms of coverage. They have towers in southern Ontario, in much of southern/central Alberta, and in the more heavily populated parts of BC. They are likely to be adding towers in Manitoba at some point in 2025. They rely on other carriers to provide coverage for their customers throughout Canada, which does result in similar total coverage to the “Big 3”. However, their fair usage policy states that if the majority of usage over consecutive billing cycles is not in their subscription area (area where they have their own towers in BC/AB/MB/ON), they may terminate your service or restrict your service on 3rd party networks.
2. Most of their current monthly plans (which are offered in both prepaid and postpaid form) include roaming across Canada/US/Mexico, and include calling between countries (with the exception of calls between US and Mexico).
3. Freedom provides WiFi calling on all their plans, and they it can be used anywhere in the world (notably, all your calls that take place over WiFi calling will act as though you are located in Canada).
4. Their cheapest plan is currently $24/month (reduced to $19/month with Autopay) for unlimited talk/text, 1GB fast data, and unlimited slow data. You can roam with this in Canada/US/Mexico.
5. Long distance is pay-per-use. You can get an addon to reduce the rates you pay.
6. If using prepaid Auto-Pay, you essentially schedule a date and choose an amount to be charged, which will be added to your available balance. It’s basically a scheduled recurring top-up for whatever amount you decide.
7. Their fair usage policy states that reduced-data-speeds where applicable are set at 256kbps down and 128kbps up on their network and 128kbps/64kbps on other networks.
8. Prepaid annual Canada-only plans exist in the $99-149/year range, with the price depending on whether you want data (up to 30GB/year).
9. A number of addons are available, including a $30/30day roaming pass for unlimited talk/text and 5GB data in up to 100 destinations.
10. A “price freeze promise” – they guarantee never to raise rates on your base plan.
11. Negatives: $10 online activation fee ($45 if activating in-store), they can’t port in ALL Canadian numbers (only numbers in the cities/locales in which they operate), online sign-up is problematic with some addresses due to Freedom forcing Canada Post look-ups for address verification.

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Obviously Freedom is only an ideal option if you spend the majority of your time inside their subscription zones.

Where Freedom make sense: The base $24/month (either prepaid or postpaid) which becomes $19/month if using Autopay gives Canada/US/Mexico roaming+calling, WiFi calling, 1GB of fast data, and unlimited slow data. None of the other carriers have anything that provide all those things at that price point. The annual plans which don’t include roaming work out to about $8-12/month which is a great price for unlimited talk/text and perhaps a bit of data on the higher end (though it’s up to you to budget your data accordingly).

Where Freedom doesn’t make sense: If you don’t care about roaming or VoWifi, competition is pretty tight in the bulk of the price range ($34+ after autopay discount). However, when similarly matched, at least Freedom does have the price-freeze promise (which they haven’t broken yet).

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newly added – Fizz Mobile

Owned by Freedom’s parent company Quebecor, Fizz is a flanker brand of Freedom Mobile, with similar coverage, but in addition to BC/AB/MB/ON, they also offer service to customers in Quebec. Fizz is pretty unique in that their offerings are styled in a build-your-own-plan fashion. If you only need the ability to receive texts in your province, you can create a plan for $5-6/month that doesn’t do anything except receive texts. Want to send unlimited texts? That adds $2-3. Unlimited calling? Another $4. Want to make your plan Canada-wide? Add another $3. Want to add US roaming? Another $3. Add 1GB/10GB/60GB of data? Add $2/$12/$17. Voicemail? $1. You get the idea.

Some unique items:

• Unused data rolls over to the next month (not perpetually though).
• Data Gifting – Don’t plan to use all your data this month? You can gift some of it to another Fizz user.
• Loyalty program – as you spend money you get points when can be used to activate monthly perks – typically either a bit of extra data or a $1 rebate.
• (negative) – If the majority of your usage in 3 consecutive payment periods takes place on partner networks (typically if you’re not in a subscription area), they may cut off your access. While Freedom Mobile has a similar policy, the common view is that Freedom’s VoWiFi seems help alleviate this (Fizz does not have WiFi calling) – either way, Fizz seems to be more aggressive in actually cutting people off.

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Lucky Mobile – Bell Canada wrecked my MTS plan, so I should go with another Bell-owned company, right?

For $19/month, Lucky Mobile gives:

• Unlimited Canada-wide minutes (unlimited incoming)
• Unlimited international text
• 500MB data/month (if using AutoPay) at 4G speeds, with unlimited data at 128Kbps once you’ve exceeded your use

More expensive plans add additional data (up to $55/month for 100GB), as well as unlimited calling to the US once you hit the $35/month range.

A number of long distance packages to non-US destinations are offered, each of which are $10/month (the time you get for that $10 depends on the destination country). Lucky Mobile has added a US offering, but at $20/month you’re probably better just going with the $35/month plan that includes US calling.

No roaming is available. If you travel outside Canada I’d expect “no service”.

In the Top Up / Monthly Charge Date page in the support section, Lucky Mobile explicitly states that funds you deposit in your account do not expire.

Obviously being Bell-owned made this a no-go for me since they had just shafted me, though a lack of roaming to the US would have killed it anyway at this price point. If you never travel outside of Canada and are fine with unlimited data at 128kbps, the $19/month plan could potentially make this a solid contender (though it’s not clear if you need to activate Auto Top-Up on that plan to enable data).

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Chatr – Rogers=6char, Chatr=5char, Fido=4char

For $19/month, Chatr gives:

• 100 Canada-wide minutes (unlimited incoming)
• Unlimited international text
• 500MB data/month (if using AutoPay) at 3G speeds

Here are a few Chatr specifics:

1. Chatr allows for long distance and roaming in various countries at pay per use rates.
2. If you step up to the $25/month plan, you again get “unlimited” data at 128Kbps.
3. A few years ago, customer service requests by phone or social media carried a $5 fee (taking action yourself via the web or the app was free). I could not verify that this time around.

I strongly considered Chatr back when plans started at $15/month, although the Rogers SIM activation limits I faced and the constant issues I’ve always had with the Rogers website prevented this Rogers-owned company from coming into first place. Chatr probably makes the most sense if you periodically travel outside of North America and don’t mind paying high pay-per-use rates (roaming rates in Australia currently appear to be $4/min $0.40/text $0.50/MMS $30/MB, with USA being a little less painful at $0.25/min and $0.05/MB).

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Public Mobile

For $19/month, Public Mobile gives:

• Unlimited Canada-wide minutes
• Unlimited international text and picture messaging
• 1GB data at 4G Speed

Public Mobile used to have a really strong discount system, which has been replaced with a points system which has not been as well-received. A few notable items, noting that when it comes to the point system, currently you can redeem 15 points for $15 of bill credit:

1. Recurring $1 monthly loyalty discount for each year you’ve been with Public Mobile (to a max of 5 years or $5/month discount). Changed to 10 worth of points for staying with Public Mobile for a full year.
2. Recurring 1 point per month discount for referrals.
3. Discount for helping out in the community forums (varies from 1-20 points).
4. Reasonably priced per-use addons. For US long distance, $15 (or 10 points) will get you 1000 minutes that you can use as needed. There are other various long distance packages as well for different countries.
5. Reasonably priced US roaming addons, assuming your trips last for a few days. For $15 you can roam in the US with unlimited talk/text for 15 days (which works out to $1/day). Or $30 for 15 days of roaming US talk/text/3GB.
6. Public Mobile has occasionally flirted with an unlimited data plan (at reduced speeds after a threshold). But for the majority of plans, once you use your allocated data it just stops working until the next month (unless you buy additional data via an addon, though these expire).
7. The US and Mexico are the only locations where roaming can be done, via an applicable Canada/US/Mexico plan. Otherwise, US roaming is available by purchasing an addon.
8. Everything is administered entirely online. There is no customer support phone number.
9. Monthly plans are per 30 days (Chatr/Lucky charge on the same day each month, known as the “anniversary date”).

Things you need beyond what your plan offers (long distance, roaming, extra data) can only be accomplished via add-ons. A quick screenshot below from the old version of their site (you’ll probably have to click for a larger version to read the small text):

Update: The 2025 list on their updated website is below (click the thumbnail for a larger version).

Add-on options boil down to:

1. Long distance to other countries ($15 for 300-1000 minutes depending on destination) – no expiry.
2. Data ($5 for 200MB or $15 for 1GB) – no expiry now expires after 30 days.
3. US Roaming which activates immediately and expires after 15 days.

Public Mobile has shifted from being the hands-down strongest low-cost option (previously under $15/month due to easily obtained discounts) to a less exciting but very reasonable contender.

Other Bits

Discount brands have improved since this was first written: while VoWifi still isn’t common, 4G and VoLTE have made their way into standard offerings.

One other aspect to mention: Bell and Telus share most of their towers. However, in the 2 major cities in Manitoba (Winnipeg/Brandon), Telus has their own towers and thus no longer use Bell towers in those 2 cities. This results in slightly less coverage for Telus/Koodo/PM than was previously available (particularly on 3G which will soon be gone), although most individuals have found they still have adequate coverage. With that in mind, if you’re in an area of Winnipeg where coverage is iffy, you may want to factor that into the equation.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that 7-11 Speakout is another discount options who still has the $100/365 day pay-per-use option in addition to plans. Since 7-11 Speakout gives 365 days on *all* top-ups, it’s technically possible for a $25 top-up to last you a year if you can get by on about 30 minutes per year of talk time per year (or 66 outgoing texts per year, unlimited incoming) based on their current rates and after the monthly 911 fee that eats up over half of your $25 over the course of the year. However, when it comes to full-fledged plans, 7-11 doesn’t include any data with their cheapest $10-19/month offerings which only makes them useful if you don’t need data.

Notes: Activation / Switching over to Public Mobile

Public Mobile has a very simple activation process. You need a SIM and a credit card (or payment voucher).

Rather than being assigned a new number, I ported mine over. This was all done online through the website during activation – it asks whether you want a new number or want to transfer one over. To transfer a number over, you need:

• The phone number you want to port.
• Your account number on your existing provider OR the IMEI on your existing phone.
• Your existing provider’s name (note that for my old MTS prepaid number I selected “MTS Allstream” rather than the new owner Bell – interestingly enough, “MTS Repair” forwarded me texts from Public Mobile during the process).
• A separate callback phone number in case they have issues porting the number and need to reach you.

It took under 2 hours for my port to be complete, and a few more hours for Bell MTS to deactivate my old sim from their network. During that period, I left the original SIM in my phone in case a verification text needed to be sent, and I popped the Public Mobile SIM in a spare phone.

An interesting hiccup: The Public Mobile SIM wouldn’t work correctly in my aging ASUS Zenfone 3 MAX for some unknown reason (even after resetting the network settings it would repeatedly connect to and then drop the Telus network), but the SIM worked fine in an older BLU phone.

Recommendations

My previous recommendations based on the landscape a few years ago were as follows:

The Public Mobile $15 plan makes a lot of sense in the following situations:

• You want the cheapest possible plan with some voice/data and unlimited text.
• You plan to stick around for awhile, gaining the annual loyalty discount.
• You don’t need fast 4G data.
• You don’t need unlimited data.
• Telus or Bell have coverage in your area (Bell/Telus share towers in most regions).
• If you roam, the only country you plan to roam in is the USA and you’re prepared to purchase the necessary addons before travel.
• If you make long distance calls, you’re prepared to purchase the appropriate addons beforehand.

The Public Mobile $15 plan does not make sense in the following situations:

• You need lots of data, fast data, or unlimited data.
• You hop providers frequently, reducing the chance you’ll gain a loyalty discount.
• Telus/Bell have poor coverage in your area.
• You plan to roam to countries other than the USA and want to use your primary phone while travelling.
• You’re not good at preparing for cell usage beforehand (you are unlikely to purchase addons before you need them).

I ultimately chose Public Mobile for the following reasons:

• The most cost-effective monthly plan ($15/month which becomes $13/month with Auto Top Up, with other options to reduce it over time including a simple loyalty reward).
• As-you-need-them Voice and Data addons that don’t carry a time restriction for usage.
• More reasonable US roaming costs than most of the Canadian competition for US stays of a few days, albeit via a 10-day addon.

My new recommendation:

• Public Mobile or Lucky Mobile if you want to reduce the risk of surprise fees or bills (no pay-per-use that can eat your bill credit).
• Public/Freedom/Lucky if you need to find something at $19/month, keeping in mind that Public Mobile will cut off your data after you use your 1GB, and Freedom is only $19/month if you use Autopay ($24/month otherwise).
• Public/Freedom/Chatr if you roam to the US. Public Mobile or Freedom Mobile if you roam to the US a lot or need your roaming to be cost effective. Freedom Mobile if you need to do so for under $30/month or also roam to Mexico.
• Freedom Mobile or Chatr if you roam outside of North America (noting that Freedom has 30-day passes available, whereas Chatr will be pay-per-use). Note that Freedom supports about 100 countries.
• Freedom Mobile if you need WiFi calling aka VoWifi.
• Public Mobile if you need non-expiring long distance add-ons.
• Lucky/Freedom/Chatr if you need unlimited data at reduced speed after you hit your data limit (select plans).

From 2021 to 2025 – a look at Public Mobile 4 years later (and some commentary)

My original plan was a $15/month plan which became $13/month with AutoPay. It gave 100 outgoing minutes, unlimited incoming minutes, unlimited text, 250MB data and a bonus 250MB of data for using AutoPay. Public Mobile never increased the base price of my plan, though when they changed their rewards system from dollars to points (and eventually forced everyone onto it), the AutoPay bonuses went away. That plan isn’t offered to new customers any longer.

4 years later, and $19/month is the minimum plan – the same price as the other “flanker” brands right now. That $19/month gives unlimited talk/text and 1GB of data. No AutoPay rewards, though since you get 5% of your spend back in points, you get almost $1 worth of points each month which technically makes PM a touch cheaper than the competitors.

I’ll start with the negatives.

Forcing everyone into the new point system in 2024 has easily been the biggest strike against Public Mobile so far. It demonstrated that they’re willing to bait-and-switch customers. Consider that if you used AutoPay under the old rewards system, after 5 years you’d be saving $7/month on your plan ($2/loyalty + $1/year stacking from rewards), all automatically applied to your bill. To close the program to new customers is one thing: nobody likes missing out, but everyone understands that offerings change. However, to actively take it away from people who were already on it and may have factored in the long term discounts when they joined PM (perhaps choosing PM instead of pursuing a competitor’s deal which is no longer available) is quite another. A bait and switch indeed.

One other negative change they made, but one which impacts far fewer people was a change to data add-ons. Originally, they sold data addons which never expired. They were expensive, but they didn’t expire. Out of the blue, they removed those data offerings and created new data addons that only last 30 days. To be clear, any non-expiring addons you previously purchased stayed. And long-distance addons were unaffected. But if you didn’t stock up on data before, this made it a bit more challenging to stay on a minimal plan and just maintain a buffer of data for rare/emergency data use.

A final negative I’ll point out is that if you upgrade to a more expensive plan, they restrict your ability to downgrade. So if you were on a $19/month plan and decide to jump up to a $35/month plan with Can/US/Mexico roaming, you can’t go back to that $19/month plan – all the “cheaper” plans will disappear from your available subscription options – you might be able to downgrade to a slightly cheaper plan, but the only way to return to the $19/month plan will likely be to port your number out to another provider, create a new account, and port it back in.

As to the positives, as I mentioned, they never increased the base cost of my plan on me, and as far as I could tell they retained all the other addons without bumping up the price (US Roaming was an exception that was slightly restructured but not in a way that is clearly better or worse).

They’ve also started to offer more attractive plans in the $30+ range (Can/US/Mex roaming, and plans with unlimited slow data after you exceed your main data appear from time to time), though much of that appears to be in response to Freedom Mobile’s offerings.

Overall, my view of Public Mobile is mixed. It would have been positive if they hadn’t torched their old rewards system. In doing so, they also torched a lot of the goodwill they’d built with people who were on it and likely would have remained loyal PM customers for years. I actually suspect there may have been a major shift behind the scenes in 2023/2024 (either guidance, policy, or management). In prior years, Public Mobile would actually give customers a Christmas bonus of some sort – data, long distance, etc. That seemed to have ended right around the time of the reward system boondoggle.

However, if you put that aside, Public’s offerings remain competitive, the TELUS-parented network has wide coverage across Canada, and their US/Mexico roaming partners (with applicable plans or addons) are solid.

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So, ready to activate? Here is the friend referral code once again:

40KKZ9

Enjoy your new service!