Rogers, Telus, and Bell Won’t Offer Streaming Music Data Plans Anytime Soon

The popularity of music streaming apps is on the rise in Canada, and fortunately there are a handful of services to choose from — iTunes Radio is still missing, though. However, there is one issue that will keep you away from using any of these apps: your monthly data allowance.

Spotify

Unfortunately for Canadians, the 4G network speeds come at a cost: the data plans offered by the incumbents are high and sometimes capped at 1GB, or sometimes just at 500MB. So if you start streaming a song, a minute could cost you about 2MB, depending on your music quality settings, which means that if you stream for an hour you can say goodbye to 120MB of your data plan.

If you cross the border, T-Mobile, for example, has plans focusing on music lovers: 4G plans designed for music addicts like me offering unlimited music streaming on services like Pandora, iHeartRadio, and more. So that doesn’t count against your 4G LTE data.

So does this mean there is hope for Canadian carriers to offer streaming music data plans? Well, not really. Here is what they said to canada.com when asked about such plans:

Telus

“We don’t currently offer this, and I can’t speculate what we might offer in the future,” Telus told in a statement.

Rogers

“We don’t currently offer plans that specifically have unlimited music streaming, but our Share Everything plans allow you to choose from 500 MB to 30 GB of data per month, depending on how you use your phone. The plans also allow you to share your data with up to 10 devices. We’re always reviewing our plans and will continue to evolve them as the needs of our customers change,” explained a representative from Rogers.

Bell

“Bell Mobility does not currently provide unlimited wireless data plans, but we offer high usage data options up to 15GB per month. Keep in mind our wireless plans are shareable too,” said a Bell PR spokesperson.

Do you use any music streaming apps?

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