Population density in Finland is pretty low and we get unlimited data for about $25/month.

We've had providers pop up that have only served the major cities, where people would get a lower fee but have roaming if they go basically anywhere outside the ultra-dense areas. The rates were still astronomical compared to many European countries.

Providers in Canada are a cartel in every definition of the word. The three major cartel members can "compete" in a province and amazingly all have identically bad pricing and policies. Then they go to Quebec or Manitoba (or maybe it was Saskatchewan?) where there is a location-specific alternative and their pricing is significantly better.

Having said all of that, I should be fair and note that some of the providers have "infinity plans" now. So if you got a Rogers 5GB plan and have used 5GB by day one, you still have free data for the rest of the month at a speed of 512Kbps (again, amazingly all three of the major providers have identical policies). Which is still an entirely workable speed for a lot of things.

For perspective:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Collines-de-l%27Outaouai...

The county I live in, is 2200 sq km, with a population density of 24/sq km. This is in Quebec, at 1.5M sq km in size, and beside one of the largest metro areas in Canada, the National Capital Region of Ottawa and Gatineau, 5th or 6th largest.

NL is 423/sq km density, 20x. It is only 40000sq km, or about 18x larger than my county.

Quebec is 35x larger, Canada 230? 240 times larger.

Further point, my municipality is in a populous province, and effectively a suburb of the nations capital.

Lots of places have far lower population densities, and we have parks, and counties larger than the Netherlands.

Lots more area to cover, for sure.

The legal structure around telecoms in Canada also requires providers to provide at least phone service everywhere, so margins have to be extremely high in the dense areas to make up for the unprofitability of servicing remote areas.