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Virgin Mobile Canada provides home internet via ‘Steve’ the modem

The service is currently available to a limited area within Canada. Virgin has a tool available on its website for customers to identify if their region is within the available service area.

Customers will be glad to hear there are no set up fees. Virgin also advertises that there are no hidden fees and no long-term contracts.

Hopefully, this is a sign that Canada’s high speed internet options will continue to diversify to the benefit of customers. However, it’s important to remember that as much as the service might appear different from the major providers, Virgin Mobile Canada is in fact owned by Bell Canada. Hopefully, Virgin will be able to provide dedicated tech support to their new home internet customers, as a relegated ‘second class’ tier of service provided as an off-shoot of Bell’s support for their more direct customer base could lead to customer dissatisfaction.

There are currently two packages available to Virgin internet customers: the 300GB plan is $50 a month, with an extra dollar for each gigabyte over — to a maximum of $50 extra; the Unlimited plan might be one of the better internet deals available currently, available for $65 a month.

In order to use Virgin home internet, customers will have to get their very own Steve the modem. Purchase of the plucky-looking modem is included in the monthly rates of Virgin’s internet service. The modem has a set download and upload speed of 25/10 Mps, so for now those are the limited speeds available to customers. While more demanding internet users are probably looking for a little more kick out of their service provider’s speeds, the modem will likely please most low- or medium-demand users.

So how do the new packages from Virgin stack up against competition? The most compelling case for the Virign Mobile Canada service comes in the form of their unlimited plan. While every service provider has an unlimited option on offer, none of them are as highly visible in terms of their services being offered, and the Virgin plan also appears to be one of the most affordable options available to Canadian consumers (despite the set speeds available through Steve the modem).

-Rogers packages visible on their product website do not include unlimited internet until you start paying much more and sign up for a fixed-term contract

-Bell does offer unlimited internet for an extra $15 on most Bell plans

-TekSavvy offers unlimited add-ons to any of their plans — though these have to be set up by phone with an agent. They also have much cheaper fees for any overages on monthly downloads.

After coming to terms with the fixed speeds of Steve, and the currently limited area of availability, Virgin’s new plans still seem like good options for consumers. Hopefully, if Virgin Mobile Canada’s efforts succeed, a wider base of internet choices will become available — and maybe more basic, greatly more affordable services — for Canadians.

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