When I landed in Montreal in March 2006, I opted for a Motorola Razr – a sleek, smart, toy-like phone. My monthly cell phone plan with Bell Mobility included: unlimited weekend and weeknights, 200 anytime local minutes, unlimited incoming messages, voice mail and caller ID. And my monthly bill was only $20+SAF+taxes.
Today, I boast to have 1 of the best plans in market and still pay $57+taxes every month which is ~200% more than what I used to pay. Why?

I can summarize all the reasons in 1 sentence:

The technology is changing too fast.

Below are more precise reasons:
SmartPhones: How much does an iPhone cost in market without a contract?
Somewhere around $700-$800.
How much does it cost when you are locked in a 3 years contract?
$150-$200.
Question to be asked? How are cell phone companies recouping the smart phone costs? The answer is, by locking you in 3 years of contract with hefty monthly charges. Unless the smart phone prices go down, your monthly bill is not expected to go down.

Voice & Text to Data: If I trust a recent article on a telecom web-site, although the data usage has been increasing every year, the growth in Mobile data has not compensated for the decline in voice and text revenues. Mobile companies are so looking for newer ways to charge the end customers so that they can recoup the revenue difference. Are you kidding me?

3G, 4G, LTE – an ongoing story: LTE is a more efficient technology offering lower transport cost per bit. But the revenue per bit is not more than 3G networks. So the Telcos that have spent their money in deploying LTE have to find new ways to charge the customers to recoup the cost.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for latest initiatives of CRTC but I don’t think our cell phone bills are going to go down in near future because of above reasons.