What you’re owed, no matter what they told you

Your carrier has to cut off international data roaming charges once they hit $100 in a month, unless you explicitly agree to keep paying.

This is a hard cap on data roaming charges, not a courtesy. The carrier must suspend the charges at $100 per monthly billing cycle unless you give express consent to continue past it. The cap applies per account — not per device — so a family with four phones abroad shares one $100 ceiling, not four. If you come home to a roaming bill in the thousands and you never consented to exceed the cap, that bill is not enforceable as issued, and it is the single most common thing the CCTS makes carriers reverse.

Going over your data allowance in Canada cannot cost you more than $50 in a month unless you approve the extra spending.

Separate from and in addition to the roaming cap. Once you accumulate $50 in additional domestic data charges within a billing cycle, the carrier must suspend service rather than keep billing you, unless you have expressly approved further spending. Like the roaming cap, this is per account rather than per device.

When your phone starts roaming in another country, the carrier has to tell you — free — what it costs and what your options are.

The notification must reach the account holder at no charge and must explain the applicable rates and the alternatives available to you. You are allowed to opt out of these notifications, which matters if you are troubleshooting a bill: if you opted out at some point, the carrier will point at that. If you did not opt out and were never notified, that is a Code violation worth raising.

A carrier cannot bill you overage on a service sold as unlimited. It can slow you down, but only if the fair use policy says so clearly.

This is the single most misunderstood right, and the gap it leaves is where most "unlimited" disappointment lives. The carrier genuinely cannot charge you overage on an unlimited service. What it can do is throttle your speed once you pass a threshold — and that is legal provided the limit is clearly explained in a fair use policy. So the honest reading of "unlimited" is: unlimited billing, limited speed. The number that matters is the throttled speed, which is usually buried in a separate policy document rather than shown at the point of sale.

Brought your own phone, or paid it off? Then there is no early cancellation fee. Full stop.

If your contract does not include a subsidised device, the carrier must not charge an early cancellation fee at all. This is worth knowing before any retention call: a fee quoted on a bring-your-own-device plan is not a fee you owe. The 2026 amendments restated this explicitly to close the argument.

An early cancellation fee can never exceed the value of the device subsidy, and must reach $0 within 24 months at the latest.

The fee exists to recover the discount the carrier gave you on hardware — nothing more. It cannot exceed that subsidy, and it must decline steadily to zero over a maximum of 24 months. This is why the three-year contract no longer exists in Canada: the Wireless Code made month 25 the point where you are always free to leave without penalty.

• •Reaches $0 within 24 months
• •Cannot exceed the device subsidy

Since June 12, 2026, carriers cannot charge you a fee to activate a new plan or change the one you have.

These fees existed to make switching feel expensive enough not to bother. The CRTC banned them for exactly that reason. If a carrier quotes you a setup, activation, or plan-change fee, it is charging something it is no longer allowed to charge. The same decision amended the Internet Code in parallel, so it covers home internet too.

Price, data allowance, and other key terms cannot change during your commitment without your express consent.

Express consent means you actively agreed — not that you failed to opt out of an email. The exception runs in your favour only: a carrier may unilaterally reduce your price or increase your allowance without asking. For changes to anything else in the contract, you are entitled to at least 30 days notice.

• •Minimum 30 days notice for other changes

Carriers must tell you your commitment is ending, when it ends, whether it auto-renews, and what the new rate will be.

Ninety days before your commitment period ends, the carrier must notify you whether the contract auto-renews, give the expiration date, and state the new rates if they change. This is your window to renegotiate from a position of strength — you are about to become free to leave without penalty, and they know it.

• •90 days before commitment end

Every device a carrier provides must be unlocked from the start, or unlocked on request at no charge.

Since December 2017, carriers must provide devices unlocked, and must unlock any device they previously provided free of charge on request — including devices still under contract. If you are told an unlock costs money or requires you to finish your term, that is wrong. This matters most for travel: an unlocked phone can take a cheap local SIM instead of a roaming pass.

They must suspend your service at no cost the moment you report a device lost or stolen — and restore it free if you get it back.

The suspension is immediate and free, and so is restoration if the device turns up. One caveat worth knowing: your underlying contract obligations continue during the suspension. Suspending service does not pause your monthly commitment or your device financing.

If a carrier-provided device is in for warranty repair and they did not give you a replacement, your wireless charges must be suspended.

This applies where the device came from your carrier under the contract and no loaner device was provided. You should not be paying for service you have no device to use. Carriers rarely apply this automatically — you generally have to ask for it.

Any contract with a cancellation fee comes with a minimum 15-day trial — 30 days if you self-identify as having a disability.

To cancel penalty-free within the trial you must stay inside the usage limits and return the device in near-new condition. The usage allowance during the trial is at least 50% of your monthly allotment, rising to 100% for the extended 30-day disability trial. Use the window deliberately: if your plan needs to work somewhere specific — a basement, a commute, another country — test it there before the clock runs out.

• •Minimum 15 days
• •30 days if you self-identify as having a disability
• •At least 50% of monthly allowance usable (100% on the 30-day extension)
• •Device must be returned in near-new condition

Every contract comes with a mandatory one-to-two page Critical Information Summary covering the terms that actually matter.

The Critical Information Summary is the most useful document almost nobody reads. Carriers must provide it with every wireless service agreement, and it must include: a complete description of key terms, the total monthly charge including any optional services you selected, all one-time charges and additional fees, usage limits, the duration and conditions of the trial period, any limits imposed on services sold as unlimited, and how to complain — including how to reach the CCTS. If a salesperson told you something that does not appear in your summary, the summary is what will be enforced.

• •One to two pages
• •Provided with every service agreement

If you have a disability, your Critical Information Summary must be provided in an accessible format at no charge.

The carrier must supply the summary in an alternative format on request, free, at any point during your commitment period — not only at signup.

If a carrier disconnects you in error, there is no reconnection charge and service must be restored within one business day.

An erroneous disconnection is the carrier's problem to fix, at its own expense, within one business day. You should not be charged to undo something you did not cause.

• •Restored within one business day
• •No reconnection charge

When a prepaid card expires you have seven days to top up and keep your remaining balance, free.

Prepaid credit does not vanish the instant it expires. You get a seven-day window to top up the account and retain the existing balance at no charge — which is the difference between losing $30 and losing nothing.

• •7 days after expiry