Rogers-owned Chatr and Bell-owned Lucky Mobile cut their $19 plans in the same week, and Chatr's new entry plan has no data unless you pay automatically.
Chatr and Lucky Mobile, the budget prepaid brands owned by Rogers and Bell, both dropped their $19 plans with 500MB of data in early October. Chatr also replaced its $21 plan with 1GB with a $22 plan that has just 500MB, and only if you pay by auto-pay.
It isn't all worse. Chatr added data on its $25, $30 and $35 plans, so its $25 tier now has 6GB against Lucky's 5GB.
Light users should turn on auto-pay, compare the $25 tiers and look at yearly plans. Black Friday promos in late November may bring cheaper options back.
A dollar more for half the data. That is the new deal at the bottom of Chatr’s price list, and it arrived the same week Chatr and Lucky Mobile both scrapped their $19 prepaid plans.
If you keep a cheap line for a parent, a teen, a backup phone or just calls and texts, these were the plans that kept your bill under $20. Chatr is owned by Rogers and Lucky Mobile by Bell, so the two biggest budget prepaid brands moved in the same direction at once. For anyone who needs only a little data, the cheapest way in now costs more.
Both $19 plans offered 500MB of data a month, and both are gone. Chatr’s $19 plan had been a limited-time offer, and it was pulled a few days before the wider changes on October 8. Lucky Mobile removed its own $19, 500MB option in the same week.
Just three days earlier, an early-October price roundup still listed Lucky’s $19 plan and said Lucky, Chatr and Fizz hadn’t changed a dollar from September. The cuts came quickly and without much warning.
Chatr replaced its $21 plan, which came with 1GB, with a $22 talk-and-text plan. It includes 500MB of data, but only if you sign up for automatic payments. Pay any other way and there’s no data at all.
Above that entry tier, the news is better. Chatr raised the data on its other monthly plans compared with the start of the month:
Those figures include auto-pay bonuses. Chatr also still sells yearly plans: 40GB for $159 a year, or 400 Canada-wide minutes for $100 a year, which works out to well under $10 a month for someone who mostly makes calls.
Lucky Mobile’s lineup after auto top-up bonuses runs $25 for 5GB, $30 for 15GB and $35 for 30GB. At $25, that leaves Lucky a gigabyte behind Chatr’s new 6GB.
The bottom of Lucky’s range is less clear, and reports differ. One said Lucky’s $21 plan with 1GB, made up of 500MB of base data plus a 500MB auto top-up bonus, was for new customers only and was ending on October 8. Another described that same $21 plan as Lucky’s new cheapest option. Before you sign up, check Lucky’s own site to see whether the $21 tier is still offered.
One more small change: Lucky’s website logo now carries a “by Bell” tag, the first time one of these budget brands has openly named its parent company.
Other brands owned by the big three carriers made changes around the same time:
None of these moves is huge on its own. A dollar here, a few gigabytes there. But they all point the same way, and they land on the people least able to absorb them: light users who picked a brand purely because it was the cheapest. Put together, the budget end of the Canadian market got a little more expensive just weeks before Black Friday.
If you use under 1GB a month, you’ve lost the cheapest options. The realistic choices now are Chatr’s $22 plan with auto-pay, Lucky’s $21 tier if it’s still available to you, or stepping up to $25 for 5GB or 6GB.
A few practical moves can soften the hit:
Possibly. Canadian carriers have often run prepaid promos around Black Friday, which falls in late November, and many shoppers expect better cellphone deals then. Trimming entry plans now can make a holiday promo look more generous. If you don’t need a new line today, waiting a few weeks may pay off, and we’ll know which brands move once the promos land.
The $22 talk-and-text plan, which includes 500MB of data only if you use auto-pay. Chatr’s yearly 400-minute plan costs $100 for the year.
Yes. Lucky removed its $19, 500MB plan in early October. Its regular lineup starts at $25 for 5GB, with a $21 plan offered to new customers around that time.
The changes affect plans for sale to new sign-ups. If you’re already on one, check your account before changing plans, since you may not be able to switch back.
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