[Chad]

NOTE: This is not a paid advertisement, I was just going to put it in the Deals forum but it's such a good deal to benefit students I felt I had to share. See below why...

It seems being nice and not naughty truly pays off if you're a Wind customer. If you're a student looking for a great deal on phone service, Wind Mobile has quite an amazing offer right now. $40/mo for unlimited everything including texts, talk, and data.

Let me repeat that. $40+TAX gets you a no-contract plan with unlimited texts (in-going AND outgoing), unlimited Canada-wide talk (anywhere in Canada), and unlimited data (e-mail, web browsing, ...tethering included), plus free voicemail, caller ID, and the regular features (call forwarding, conferencing, call waiting, etc). PLUS 2 hours of calling to anywhere in the US. FREE.

Best part of all? As long as you keep your balance topped up each month (you can set up pre-auth payment with a credit card to pay for you each month automatically) so that it is continuously active and in "good standing" - they will continue to honor the $40/mo deal. That means $40/mo, for unlimited, forever. No contracts. (Note: Once you switch out of one of these special plans, you will not be able to return to them)

I switched to Wind Mobile last year and it's been one of the best choices. I'm using the data tethering on a daily basis. I originally was paying $60+/mo, but was able to switch to this new promotion, and you can too!

How Students Can Use This To Save Money

For students, this will save a LOT of money on your phone/text/AND internet bill each month having unlimited. Let me explain:

1. FREE LONG DISTANCE. You can call long distance to anywhere in Canada as long as you're located in Hamilton or any 'Wind Zone' when you make the call. Therefore, no more paying for long distance. Plus you get 2 hours of long distance calling to the US for free per month.

2. You can 'tether' your unlimited data. Meaning, with the press of a button on a smart phone that has tethering options enabled, you can turn your phone into a wifi hotspot. What does that mean? It means that you can open up your laptop and connect to your own private wifi network that is streaming data directly from your phone... wirelessly. That means you can have internet ANYWHERE. Not just anywhere on campus, but anywhere you are in and around Hamilton, including all the way from here to Toronto, or even in your student house (say goodbye to internet provider?). If all you're doing is surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, and checking e-mail.. the speed is great. Of course, not recommended for gamers, or those who like to download Torrents or large files. Data usage is unlimited. (Note: Wind Mobile has a 5GB/mo throttling limit meaning once you hit 5GB of data usage in the month, they will not cut you off... but will slow your connection downloading speed a bit. Then once a new month starts, that counter resets).

3. NO CONTRACT. You aren't locked in at all. Cancel anytime. Any month. With other carriers you're locked in for up to 3 years and can't change your plan easily. With this plan at Wind.. it doesn't really get much better than unlimited everything.

Existing Wind Mobile customers can switch to this new plan right now. Just call 1-877-946-3184 or 611 from your phone and press 2 - 1 - 2 - 2 after the promo message to talk to a customer service rep.

Offer ends December 24th 2010.

See the offer on the Wind Mobile site here.

See Wind Mobile's coverage area map here (click Hamilton under 'By City' and click Find). Note: Wind's coverage is basically all of Hamilton.

Note: Not all phones work with Wind's network, they are on a different frequency band than Telus/Rogers/Bell, meaning you may not be able to use your current phone with Wind. Call and ask to see if your phone is compatible.

Looking to get a new phone? Don't like the phones currently sold at Wind? You can buy any of these phones, compatible on Wind's network including the Google Nexus One and other great Android phones. Just buy the phone, a $25 SIM card from Wind, plug in the SIM, activate, and go.

Koodo is really disappointing me right now.

I think I'll get on this, I've been thinking of switching for quite some time now. How is their service overall though compared to Rogers?

Joining WIND was the worst decision i have ever taken ... the network is sooooo bad ... it drops sooooo much and I even miss incoming txts ALL THE TIME ....

I have a Rogers phone and a WIND one ... I asked my friends to txt me to both and I received all the txts on the Rogers phone while the WIND one missed a lot of them.

If someone sends me a txt longer than 160 characters, then 80% of the time I get only a part of the msg and not all of it.

I had a problem of receiving long txts as bits and pieces of 160 characters so I called the customer services and after 40 minutes on the phone with them, they tell me "it's is how our network is set up, we divide all txts into 160 characters and receive them as separate txts" ..... imagine someone sends you a 3 x 160 characters msg and you get it as 3 different txts ... THAT'S ANNOYING !!!!!

i have all the services mentioned above in miracle plan except data plan and i pay $25 /month. But it is only for 1 yr as it is a student plan.

So far haven't had any major issues with Wind. Service has been great. Certain areas of Ancaster have been hit and miss sometimes with texts going through, but on my Google Nexus One phone I have an app that puts a 'received' icon beside each of my sent texts and pings out to see if the text was received. If there was an issue then it tells me the text wasn't received and I just send it again.

With regards to texts being 'cut off' I thought that was fairly standard practice.. when I was with Telus I had the same issue with my Blackberry Pearl. It didn't even LET me type anything longer than 160 chars.. just stopped typing. With my Nexus I can type as long as I want in my message box and it splits it up when it sends to the user. Friends I know using Koodo that send me long texts they come in split up, so I think Koodo does the same thing?

Compared with Rogers I haven't done any tests, so I can't say. But Wind is a new player in the phone service biz, so they are still expanding and becoming more reliable each year. Rogers is definitely the 'most reliable' network. However, I can tell you that 95% of the time I always get good signal in the areas I'm traveling on a regular basis (Hamilton West mountain, downtown near McMaster, Burlington, and Toronto). I use my unlimited data to stream internet radio in my car through my stereo speakers when driving to Toronto... and I can tell you that the internet stream only dropped TWICE between Hamilton and downtown Toronto. I think that's pretty impressive. Also, there's times when friends who have Rogers and blackberry phones have shown me they have no signal on their phone, while my phone with Wind gets 1 bar. Meanwhile, it's been the other way around sometimes when I've been in Burlington. So it seems hit and miss to compare.

With regards to data speed, it's surprisingly very fast. Blazing fast compared to the free Wifi at Starbucks & Williams. It's comparable to the internet speed I was getting with regular high speed.

So annoying receiving split up messages.. I regularly type 2-5 texts long messages :(
I like the tethering thing though....

No iPhone then no Wind

For people who travel internationally, I think what you have to keep in mind are the band frequencies per phone/service (That is, if you're planning to use the same service while travelling, or just generally have the option to use the phone while travelling). Wind uses AWS(1700/2100), while most other countries and phone companies work under one of the following GSM Bands:850/900/1800/1900. (I could be wrong in my understanding of this though, but that's what I understood when I looked it up a little bit.)

Aside from that, I think Wind plans are fabulous. I just don't like the service so far. Maybe one day when the service is as reliable as Rogers?

Originally Posted by karna

i have all the services mentioned above in miracle plan except data plan and i pay $25 /month. But it is only for 1 yr as it is a student plan.

Make sure to call Wind up and ask for your account to be transfer to this new deal. Since this new plan does not have an expiring date, it is superior to the 1 yr student plan.

Originally Posted by RyanC

So annoying receiving split up messages.. I regularly type 2-5 texts long messages :(
I like the tethering thing though....

All text message split up after the character limit. This is how the protocol was design, there is no way to get around that.

A solution is to get a phone that support threaded text messaging. It will then allow you to view pieces messages into one big one. Or allow you to send one big message and automatically break the messages up into smaller one for transmission.

the plans are nice but u are forced to buy an original price phone whic is ridic. imo let wind set up its network, still unstable

Darn....I just got a Koodo plan 2 months ago =.=

Originally Posted by Leeoku

the plans are nice but u are forced to buy an original price phone whic is ridic. imo let wind set up its network, still unstable

You can actually prescripe to something called a WindTab. Basically, its a $150 off the original price of the phone. You pay it off by just paying your monthly fees. A bonus of 10% of that monthly fees goes to pay down your tab. In essence its like a contract...

If you sign for a $25 plan, it will takes you 5 years to pay it off. For $40, a bit over 3 years.

One more thing...

Don't buy into the negative press about new network means bad network. If their network is truly horrific, people won't be signing up in bulk. I have Fido and I get delay texts, or have no signals. But I can't blame their network being new so what do I blame it on?

Wind, like others, have a refund policy in place. At this price, if you feel like it is right for you, I would suggest you try it out. Worse case scenario, you have to do a refund.

I'm seriously considering cancelling my Rogers contract (and paying w/e the ridiculous fee is), chucking my iPhone, and buying a Nexus S...

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

I'm seriously considering cancelling my Rogers contract (and paying w/e the ridiculous fee is), chucking my iPhone, and buying a Nexus S...

Me too... I been drooling over the review of the Nexus S. In fact, I'm waiting for Fido to open in order to get the exact amount I will owed them for disconnecting the service. I'm sure my iPhone 4, once sold, can recover that amount.