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There's no such thing as unlimited media streaming, and prices are usually $30/gigabyte at best for prepaid.
See for yourself. Here are comanies that offer full nation-wide coverage (not just small urban areas). Make sure you check the prices for additional data.

Telus, Bell, Rogers, Virgin, Koodo.

Yes I would have preferred the X Pure, but it's not available in Canada.

I got my Moto X Play for $260 CAD. Regular price was $410 from Koodo. They have a continuous promo of $50 off if you buy the phone "On the Tab" (ie. finance it). But I got in on an additional launch promo where I could choose a free Moto 360 or $100 Visa Gift Card. I turned around and used the gift card to pay down the tab another $100, effectively getting the phone for $260 out of pocket.

The parent AC is mostly incorrect. The major telecoms only emphasise post-paid plans, but do have pre-paid available without the need to purchase a phone. They don't want to sell them to you however, and will only tell you about pre-paid if you visit their website or ask them specifically.

In Canada there a dozen or so MVNO's, most of whom operate on a pre-paid model in addition to the 'big three' incumbent companies. Each of the 'big three' providers (Rogers, Bell, Telus) owns one or two MVNO's. Rogers has Fido and Chatr, Bell has Virgin and Telus has Koodo. There are also several highly regional carriers (SaskTel, MTS, Lynx, TBayTel, ICE Wireless, etc.) that offer services where the 'Big 3' do not operate (Northern Quebec, Northwest Territories, Northern Ontario, etc.).

All that being said, there is only one major GSM network, the Rogers/Fido network. Thus, (until 2008/2009) only Rogers/Fido were offering pre-paid plans you could use with a GSM phone. Telus and Bell were CDMA. In the last few years Telus and Bell have built their own HSPA+ network. Now that they have a network that takes SIM cards, all three of the major players are offering inexpensive pre-paid SIM cards, with fairly expensive per-minute rates (40c/minute, unless you get a pre-paid 'plan'. Some of the plans are even 'free' if you top up frequently enough).

Further muddying the waters is the fact that most of the MVNOs don't specialise in pre-paid 'long distance' rates or pre-paid 'local' rates. Part of this is because of foreign ownership restrictions. These have been recently eased, but are still tighter than most other countries. Canada is also extremely large, with a small population. Canada is the size of Europe, with 10x fewer people. England, is approximately the same size as Southern Ontario (130,000km^2), but England has 50,000,000 people and Southern Ontario has 12,000,000. Let us not forget that a large part is because the owners of the networks don't want to give anyone a better deal than they give their own customers, at least not appreciably.

All that being said, the 'big three' all offer prepaid SIMs for $10-$20 dollars, so do most of their sub brands. The MVNOs Petro-Canada Mobility and 7-11 'Speak out' wireless are reasonably easy to find and offer prepaid services depending on where you are visiting.

Rogers Wireless - http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/plans#,Tabset1--4
Telus Mobility - http://www.telusmobility.com/en/ON/prepaid/rate-plans.shtml
Bell Mobility - http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Prepaid_plans

Big three 'sub brands' (frequently with regional restrictions ie: major cities):
Virgin Mobile - Bell Mobility - http://www.virginmobile.ca/en/plans/prepaid-talktext-plans.html?itcid=NAV:58
Koodo - Telus Mobility - http://koodomobile.com/en/on/plansandboosters.shtml
Fido - Rogers Wireless - http://www.fido.ca/web/page/portal/Fido/PrepaidPlans?forwardTo=prepaidPlans
Chatr - Rogers Wireless - http://www.chatrwireless.com/web/chatr.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PlanBrowse

Regional Operators:
Sasktel - http://www.sasktel.com/personal/mobility/prepaid/index.html
MTS - http://www.mts.ca/mts/personal/wireless/mts+prepaid+wireless ... etc.

Independent MVNOs:
Petro Canada Mobility - (Rogers Network) -

http://koodomobile.com/en/on/datasaver.shtml

Flex data plan, you pay for what you actually use. (within predefined tiers). $20 gets you 1GB, and $30 gets you 3GB. The big three expect you to take it without a lube, but all three of them have fight brands which are much more reasonably priced... Koodo (linked), for example, is owned by Telus. As it's owned by Telus, it's on the Bellus network, and has the same coverage as either Bell/Telus. They also offer nationwide long distance at no extra cost on all of their plans (except the City plan, which is $35/mo for unlimited local calling... same with nationwide LD is $50/mo), and no calling zones (nationwide roaming).

I'm paying $40/mo for my smartphone plan, and that's including all the data I use, nationwide LD, unlimited evenings/weekends, and unlimited global texting. I don't use a lot of data, but even if I did it'd still be significantly less expensive than Bell or Telus, and you couldn't pay me enough to do business with Rogers, as I've had far too many bad experiences with them in the past. (the unlimited global texting and unlimited nationwide long distance, both of which I do actually use, are what make it so).

$5 per month gets me unlimited global texting.

Convert that to kilobytes, and get back to me on whether that's expensive compared to paying for smartphone data. :)

The "discount" carrier is also likely to be unable or unwilling to activate its parent company's phones or "unlocked" phones. Good luck getting an iPhone to work on the U.S. networks of Boost or Virgin, even though their parent company Sprint offers an iPhone. It was only recently that Virgin Mobile USA got Android phones.

You'd be wrong. :) If I buy a phone through Koodo, they'll unlock it through their website, as long as my account is in good standing (no money owing, and no late payments on my bill over the last 3 months. They're more expensive than going through a company like gsmliberty.net, but they will do it.

And they will indeed activate their parent company's phones. They'll also activate phones from other carriers. In fact, their website actively encourages you to unlock your phone and bring it to them, and provides an easy way to check whether a phone on another network will work with theirs: http://koodomobile.com/en/on/switch2koodo.shtml My phone actually is one that was sold originally by the parent company for Koodo, and I've had it on 4 different networks in Canada without needing to replace it. (actually, it's getting a bit long in the tooth, and I've been shopping around for a replacement)

If I was travelling to the US, I'd just buy a US prepaid SIM and put it in my phone. There are US carriers who will sell you a SIM without selling you a phone, and as long as the network is either quad-band GSM or 850/1900/2100 HSPA or WCDMA, my phone will work. That means I can use t-mob, ATT, VZW, or any of the carriers that use their networks, as long as I can get my hands on a SIM and put minutes on it. In the US, I admit that's a bit difficult, but $2/day unlimited everything pay as you go from ATT is quite amenable for a short trip, and they were happy sell me a SIM without a phone when I needed one last summer. Sprint is a special animal... for some reason, they still use CDMA for their network, and have not gone to WCDMA with SIM cards yet. All of the other major players in the US use SIM cards, however, and can work with any unlocked phone as long as the phone supports the appropriate frequencies.

... you do realize that's exactly what a plan is?

Take my cell carrier: https://shop.koodomobile.com/plans/add-ons/index.html

They have two data addons available. One is $25/mo for 2GB, flat rate. The other is a flex data plan, which starts at $5/mo. The tiers for that one are: 25MB, 100MB, 300MB, 1GB, and 3GB, increasing by $5/mo between each tier, only jumping from $20 to $30/mo between 1GB and 3GB. Both of the data plans are $0.02/MB ($20/GB) for overage, making the flat rate plan a viable option only if you plan on using between 1GB and 2GB/mo. That is the "plan". You can, however, install an app on your phone which keeps track of data and cuts you off when you go over. You can also ask them to cut you off when you reach your limit. They will happily do that for you, but you have to ask them to set it up on your account. The reason it's not set up like that by default is quite simple: you're not left in the cold if you need it for an emergency.

If you want a plan that simply cuts off when you have spent your monthly limit, why don't you go on a prepaid plan? You give them a set dollar amount top-up every month, and when you reach that limit, that's all she wrote. Your phone stops working until you put more money in the till. Added bonus: if you don't use your monthly limit in the month, it carries over to next month.

Perhaps you could maybe look into what they're offering, before you say that something's impossible. What you're asking for is very easily doable.

Free Texting (and they give you a phone number) and phone calls. All the solutions I'm aware of lack Picture Capability, but Google is working on that I Think. Fuck AT&T & Verizon's 20 bucks a month for texting, that's all I'm saying. Anyone who pays so much for so little needs their head checked

Depends on your carrier, I guess.

https://shop.koodomobile.com/plans/add-ons/index.html

I can get Unlimited global texting for $5/mo, Call display for $6/mo, and Voicemail for $6/mo, or I can get all three for $10/mo. By NA standards that's stupidly cheap... but European and Asian standards, that's ridiculously overpriced. It depends on who you're with, I suppose. That said, ATT seems to like fucking its customers over, just going on past example.... perhaps your problem isn't that you're paying for texting, it's that the company you're with has their heads so far up their asses they can see out their mouth....