The battle for your wireless Canadian dollar keeps heating up – however, the one adjusting the thermometer is little old WIND Mobile and their approximately 800,000 subscribers. In an effort to undercut the Big Three…Rogers, Telus and Bell…WIND Mobile is offering a new optional Add-On for any of its existing smartphone plans. For only $9 a month, WIND is now offering a “Data Share Add-On” that allows subscribers to share the data in their own smartphone plan with other connected devices…smartphone or tablet, as long as you can insert a SIM card.
WIND Mobile says, “The data share plan is about using data on accompanying connected devices, including tablets, laptops and children’s phones, and sharing your Wind plan with them.” WIND customers simply need to purchase additional SIM cards and then connect them to their current smartphone’s data plan. Rogers, Bell and Telus have had shared data plans since mid-2013 for an additional $10 a month, however, their program allows you to share your smartphone’s data only with a tablet. WIND’s data share concept seems to allow their subscribers the ability to share your data with any device that accepts a SIM card – another smartphone or tablet.
Shared plans are coming and there is no stopping them, but in general are not a bad thing for family plans where all users can tap into one ‘bucket’ of data, shared by all members. Another thing to consider is the size of your bucket of data and how much data a carrier will allow you to use at full-throttle before the speed is cutback. Generally, lower data plans, 1GB to 5GB per month are usually safe from throttling, but most fine print tells you the carrier can do it at any time if the cell tower is overloaded or other things are happening on their network to cause an extra load. A carrier wants to honor your data amount, but their main concern has to be for all subscribers getting a fair speed. WIND’s least expensive plan with data is a 2GB ‘bucket’ per month, so sharing that amount would be a great option for 2 or 3 people.