Bell adds new $55/5GB ‘Lite’ add-a-line plan, bundles Crave Mobile with $90+ plans

Bell rolled out a fresh new look for the mobile plan page on its website and a few minor changes to its plan offerings.

First, Bell’s plans have the same prices and data but new bonuses and features. The carrier appears to have dropped its $175/mo 100GB plan or removed it from the main plan page. Additionally, plans still include ‘unlimited’ data that gives customers a set amount at typical network speed. Once users surpass that allotment, they can continue to use data at a throttled speed of up to 512Kbps.

Check out the price and data amounts below:

• $80/mo 20GB ‘Essential’ plan
• $90/mo 40GB ‘Ultimate 40’ plan
• $100/mo 50GB ‘Ultimate 50’ plan
• $55/mo 5GB ‘Lite’ plan with 4G data – only available to new activations that add a line

Bell plans as of February 01, 2022

The new ‘Lite’ plan is particularly interesting. It appears to be an add-a-line plan and one that’s targeted at kids since it includes “parental-controlled data access with the Data Manager tool.” However, unlike the other plans, the ‘Lite’ option does not have access to Bell’s 5G network. Interestingly, it also doesn’t appear to benefit from Bell’s multi-line discount, which reduces your total bill by $15/mo per line added.

Bell’s $90/mo and $100/mo plans now include ‘Crave Mobile’ for 24 months. Crave Mobile is Bell’s mobile-only plan for its streaming service that includes all the content offered in Crave’s base tier and HBO + Movies tier for $9.99/mo. You can learn more about it here.

Crave Mobile service is some nice added value likely intended to compete with Rogers, which bundles free Disney+ for 6 months with its $90 and $100 plans.

Other changes include minor tweaks to included features. All of Bell’s plans include shareable data, unlimited Canada-wide calling and texting and call display, call waiting, and conference calling. However, Bell’s $90 plan now includes unlimited international texting as well, while the $100 plan has unlimited international texting and U.S. calling, texting, and data.

Bell’s old plans (January 21, 2022)

Bell also appears to have applied quality limits for video streaming to its plans. The $80 ‘Essential’ plan and the new ‘Lite’ plan both support “SD video streaming’ — Bell’s website notes that’s up to 480p video. The carrier has a new $5/mo add-on for the Essential plan that bumps that quality cap up to ‘HD video streaming,’ which is up to 1080p. The $90 and $100 plans both include ‘HD video streaming.’

Overall, I’m not sure these changes are necessarily good. While I like the addition of a ‘Lite’ plan for kids, it seems pricey at $55/mo (Fido, Koodo, and Virgin Plus all offer $58/15GB plans and $52/8GB plans at the moment). Additionally, I’m not a huge fan of adding several feature differences like the video streaming quality limits, which will likely make Bell’s plans far more confusing for customers.

You can check out all of Bell’s plan changes here. Note prices may differ depending on the region.