Here in Canada, prices are not cheap yet, but getting better slowly due to increasing competition. What I see is that the subsidized plan makes sense in the moment, in that it's the regular plan + the cost of the phone divided over 24 months, but the problem with that is that cost of a regular plan, or the features (e.g. amount of data, minutes) that are provided by it, are going to improve substantially over the next 6 month and even moreso over the next 12-24 months. If you can afford it, you're much better off buying the phone outright and then going month-to-month with the cheapest plan you can find. The problem is, most of the people doing this can't fathom affording buying the phone outright, but it's easier to stomach as a hidden cost.