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Like I said, CDN carriers are legally bound and will abide by the rules of their contracts for service WITHIN Canada. Anything outside of canada is not affected by the law because you are using a network owned by a different company (U.S. carrier or others) and thus the CDN carrier cannot control what carriers in other countries are doing. Service outside of canada is not an obligation and is provided more as a “courtesy” than anything else. Before thinking of breaking off the contract, have you at least checked with other CDN carriers what are their roaming rates and if they will change it the same way?

Hope this help …

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Please give details as to what you mean by “change to their U.S. Roaming fee” … but (I’m going by pure logic here) like I explained in another post, CDN carriers are legally bound and will abide by the rules of their contracts for service WITHIN Canada. Once again, if YOU DECIDE to use your phone while roaming in the U.S. you have to pay whatever the U.S. carrier is charging. Your carrier receives the bill from the U.S carrier and simply applies it to your invoice. If you don’t like it, leave your phone home and buy a cheap U.S pre-paid phone over there or use a Long Distance calling card with a landline phone (2c per minute).

Best way to answer your question though is to read the contract you signed when you bought your phone (IF you still have it, it will be explained somewhere in it) or call your carrier’s customer service and ask them. Asking anyone on the net will not garantee a true answer

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Because of my work I am a little bit limited as to the information I can provide here so I can’t be more precise when it comes to numbers … but I will answer your comment about “I wonder how people will react if they had to pay for emails unless you subscribed to a 10 dollar bundle”.
That is exactly what is happening but strangely enough people don’t seem to see it. If you have a data phone, you HAVE to be on a data feature (integrated in your main plan or added as a feature) to have emails/internet services. If you insist not to pay for a monthly data feature, the carrier will put you on a “pay-per-use” type of data feature which means “you don’t use it = you don’t pay monthly but if you use it = you pay huge (between $20 and $40 per MB).

Anyway, I think the main point is this … nobody is forcing people to be on a contract. You can very well not take a contract and still have a phone or take a small 1 year contract without renewing it at the end and still use your phone … the only difference is that you will have to purchase your phone at full retail price (no rebates) and you won’t get promotion pricing on a rate plan BUT you’ll be free to leave at any time without fees if you want to! Ain’t that great? YOU have the choice! All you have to do is decide between getting the advantages and being tied down or paying a bit more and be free … can’t have both but like I said it’s YOUR decision and nobody will force you. There is no point in playing the victim all the time. All you need to do is take a decision AND ASSUME IT

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Your response was educational for sure. However, I am still a bit off with the numbers.

Text msg. I am actually aware on how it works. Did some research on why my text msgs used to get lost time to time. On any given day, what is the storage requirements for text msging (for which 15c a msg is charged outside bundle). In the basic bundle, a 2c charge is understandable). I think, bell would have been much better off just adding the 5 bucks to their line rent, and saying they are throwing in 250 free text msging. 15c incoming msg charge comes across as forcing people to buy a package. I wonder how people will react if they had to pay for emails unless you subscribed to a 10 dollar bundle. Made no sense at 15c each and maybe you can give some numbers based on storage costs these days. Personal issue was that Bell could unilaterally change their terms and I had to abide or be hit with 400 dollar fee. I am glad the industry has acknowledge this, but the fact they had this power will open them to abuse.

I agree with the “best deal” part. But when a company is trying to please their investors over their clients, it is short term thinking where the rates have to be higher eventually. You may have contradicted your earlier posting. Phone companies are giving you financial incentive to call in and complain/threaten. How can you customers toto stop doing so.

Blackberry costs. Can you verify your numbers? My understanding is the Blackberry 9630 is a 650 dollar phone which bell subsidizes by 400 dollars on a 3 year plan with Data. As for not subsidizing, I believe most European countries do not do so and people do buy phones a lot more there. I would think most people would buy a phone they can afford and there will not be cross subsidies going on. However, as per my other suggestion, amortize the subsidy if you want to be fair. If I was to quit 2 years into a 3 year contract, I should only have to pay a 133 dollars. This 20 dollars a month is back loaded which is what I consider entrapment. Almost seems like US style mortgage crises. Helping people buy stuff they cannot afford and then trying to recoup the cost in the form of higher rates.

Roaming charges, I have been unable to find such high rates in the west. You can blame it on any factor you want, bottom line something is not right. As for Pakistan, the salaries may be lower there, but the billions you quote bell is spending on infrastructure will drown out the difference. I would attribute it to “because they can”. There is no incentive to lower the charges. Interestingly, Rogers now has some new international data roaming packages. Maybe Bell will follow suit.

I never believed the purpose is to rip people off. I believe that Bell and Rogers priorities are for short term benefits to themselves (investor relations tops customer relations). They can get away with this because, hey, where am I going to go? Hopefully meaningful competition will lower price forcing these companies to try and get some efficiencies internally. I think they are probably huge job creating machines right now resulting in the costs being passed down.

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Great comment and I’ll try my best to answer it

Concerning BB msg and sms … what most people don’t know when it comes to BB is that BB msg (or pin-to-pin)uses a direct peer-to-peer transport system which does not temporarely store the msg on any of the carrier’s systems where sms do get stored on the SMSC (message center). It’s the same as if your phones was directly connected together via cable even if there is no cable. Using the same principle, emails on a BB are pulled from youe email provider by a RIM owned server and sent straight to your phone. The information still goes through the carrier’s network as data but it is a “straight-through” passage that does not require storage space. If you are curious about this go read this very nice article on http://www.messaging.telecom2.com/articles/sms_trends_future_of_sms_messaging_tekelec_solutions.htm called the future of sms and read the section about “First delivery attempt”.

For the “best deals” part, you have to understand that all public companies are mostly rated on 2 things by the shareholders/investors; the amount of net new clients they acquire per month and their CHURN factor (client lost to a competitor). So the game is “get new clients” by any means and try to keep the actual ones happy as best you can. New possible clients will always get better promotions to attract them. This has become a business rule applied to ALL domains (not just cellphones) of services and we have the stock market to blame for it. The best way to get “the deal” is just before your contract ends (renewal time), shop around and call your carrier with competitor’s offering details and your carrier will match it or do better upon renewal. Every user has different needs, if carriers slims down on plans or grandfathers too much, it makes his potential market smaller thus losing clients and unable to acquire new ones. Yes plans changes all the time based on those 2 rules. If the neighbor changes something … do the same thing yourself.

Another thing people don’t know is the real reason behind contracts and cancellation penalty fees; As an exemple the BB phone you buy between $200 and $600 (or even free) depending on contract or not is not the real cost. The manufacturer will sell it to the CDN carrier between $1000 and $1500 a unit becaue we have less users (smaller population so we buy less units from them)so if you leave after 3 months or ask for a free replacement in mid-contract they lost/lose $ with you thus needing you for 2-3 years to make sure a profit is made. Don’t subsidize you say? Who will pay $1500 for a phone? very few people will.

For the $51/MB data roaming charges (see my first post). Let’s say that a CDN carrier wants his users to roam in Germany but there are 8 carriers in Germany. They start a bidding process to see who will charge less to their users to hop on the network over there and do a “partnership” with them. The consensus by most countries on the cheapest rate seems to be around $51/MB. Why? too many reasons but population, geographics, cost of operations (salaries in countries like Pakistan are ridiculously low compare to us) just to name a few… Let’s not mix politics and business, Pakistan people should rebel against their government to get clean water instead of buying cellphones

In short … It’s all A LOT more complicated than people think! Yes, companies are there to make $$$ and yes PDGs are making ridiculous salaries and some indivudals scams and end up in prison when they get caught but it doesn’t mean that big “companies” first purpose is to rip off people. Talk to a business economics teacher if you think otherwise … lol

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Few thoughts.

Not getting lost in the details of text msging, end of the day it is just data and we are being charged 5c per 140 bytes. That is 40c per kb. Why did bell feel it had to be a leader in the western world to start charging for incoming mails. Why is it that I can BB msg someone and that is not an issue from infrastructure perspective but my text msg over loads them.

I agree people call in all the time. I for 10 years never once called to do that till I realized that despite me being a power user, people who did, got way better deals than me. I am with Bell and they have so many plans which are constantly changing that you make everyone feel they are the victims. The solution really is quite simple and that is to start charging for these calls like other country does so you make THOSE people pay. Simplify the plans, grandfather those who have a current one. I use Orange when I am in the UK. They gave me a pay as you go Blackberry enable sim card. Then they gave me unlimited Blackberry access for 6 months free. After that, 5 pounds a month. The best you can get in Canada is 30 dollars a month.

I do agree with some of your points. But people call all carriers everywhere. But I cannot see for the life of me why Bell is charging me 51 dollars per megabyte for roaming. Is there any European or American company which charges more? Roaming on my prepaid Orange phone in Dubai is cheaper than roaming on my post paid Bell.

An country like Pakistan where 50% of people don’t have access to safe drinking water have penetration rates of 60%+ and guess what, the companies there are profitable.

One more suggestion, stop subsidizing phones. One 400 dollars are exchanged with the user in the form of the subsidy, lines are drawn. You don’t want me to leave because you have invested in me and I forget what you did do and keep complaining about the few dollars I have to pay extra. In effect this only serves as a trap which the user is always complaining about. If you feel the need to subsidize, take the money upfront and give the 400 dollar back over the life of the contract.

Finally, I think it is unfair to say the Canadian public is different from the rest of the world. Shows the companies are just not in touch with their customers. Net (including subsidy) Orange in the UK probably ends up taking more money off me than Bell, but I feel I am treated fairly. As a power user, I don’t actually feel I am being ripped off (other than roaming), but I always feel that I am not treated as a one when people spending 1/3rd as me are getting better deals than me.

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The content being downloaded or uploaded by users on a mobile network is only one
element of the total traffic that is being transmitted and received at any one time.
Messages are sent to the network to authenticate the user, to control the service
itself and to indicate if the user is moving from one cell to another.
There are also pieces of information that have to be transported about who the end
user is, where the data that is being sent came from and how the data being received
should be handled by the customer’s phone. Some applications have additional signalling requirements that take a further portion of the
available bandwidth. These elements are essential to the operation of the service,
the network and the end user device’s correct functioning, but can reduce the
amount of bandwidth available to carry content that is visible to the mobile user.

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I did not think I would have to specify as my post was so long already but by sms I mean in the wide sense of messaging. Yes, most phones will support sms between 80 and 180 characters as a single page sms but will actually let you go over that limit by splitting your sms into a multi-page msg (wich becomes 2,3,4 msg on the server) or making it a mms (multimedia message wich is bigger than 140 bytes). To that add all the regular MMS which are composed of picture messages and video messages that uses the same transport system and servers. Also the voicemail notification sent to your phone is a sms and there are new services that will convert a voicemail msg into a text and send it as sms. So the bytes calculation you made is actually way under what networks have to support. Oh and not to mention international messaging too …

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regarding the 46 millions SMS

1 sms is 140 characters so 140 bytes
46 millions x 140 bytes = about 6 Gbytes

6 Gbytes per day, in all the country … It’s a small amount of data.

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To Cocaines :
“roaming and long distance ” : data roaming charges while you travel to the U.S. ($3 to $12/MB depending on plan) and in particular international roaming at $51/MB are not fixed by the canadian carrier. Those charges are what the foreign carriers are charging your carrier to let you use their network while visiting their country. Your carrier does not make profit out of those charges. They receive the bill for the foreign carrier and simply applies it to your invoice. If you have a Blackberry you can set it to “data off when roaming” in the options so you won’t get charged and a PDA (windows mobile) just undo the data connection setting before crossing the border. For the long distance, get a US. long distance package or an unlimited LD feature added … lots of options available.

To Rawr :
“services and features that do not have a fixed term commitment.”” — That means if you are not on a 1-2-3 years contract. If you are not on a contract then you can cancel your account at any time without any penalty fees anyway so if something changes and you are not happy switch to another carrier. If you are on a contract and a feature is included as a promotion when you sign then it is included for the time-lenght (unless specified otherwise) of the contract and cannot be changed by the carrier before the end of the contract. Carriers cannot legally and will not renew contracts without you asking to renew specifically to honor that law.

To X1ZERO :
You have the true story … a basic (or core) voice plan cannot be changed during the contract. Add-ons can and that is normal. Add-ons are added upon user’s request and can be taken out at any time if you don’t want it anymore.

To 2smooth :
Yes carriers started charging for incoming sms ONLY to people that did not have a sms package included in their plan already. They also created new smaller sms packages and reduced prices on actual sms packages + ALL sms packages (starting at $3/month) now includes unlimited incoming sms. Anyway, everybody using sms on a regular basis before the change had a sms package so no real change there for users. The medias made a big fuzz about it and had people panicking/screaming for nothing. Why the change then I hear you ask? In 1 year alone, the average daily amount of sms sent/received in canada went up to 46 millions sms PER DAY! Carriers had to invest A LOT of $$$ to modify equipments and add sms servers to support that increase in usage. It will take years for carriers to recuperate the amounts invested.

To Roger A:
Your post is all wrong so get your facts straighten out before posting please. US prices are lower than CDN only because of the geographic/higher amount of carriers/much more bigger population = more users/more competition equals cheaper prices. Prices are going DOWN right now, not up. If users would do their homework and stop calling carriers to request credits saying “Oh! I did not know I would be charged for that” or “nobody told me” or ask carriers to replace their phone free because they dropped it in water, etc then prices would go down even more! Everytime people threathen carriers to switch expecting to get free stuff for their loyalty they contribute to prices staying level or increasing.

To ALL:
Go read on HSPA and LTE … carriers are investing billions of $$$ right now to modify their network for those technologies so you can have faster internet speeds on cellphones. Soon your phone will be faster and do more than your cabled internet home. People want to use their phones as tiny portable computers these days but as usual are not willing to pay for it. Over that they call technical support all the time to learn how to use their phones instead of reading the userguide or checking the website first so carriers have been hiring non-stop at a huge cost for the past 2 years to provide service to users even if ALL the info you need can be found easily on their websites.

In brief, stop playing victims, do your research, stop switching carriers (or threathening to) for stupid reasons and everybody will pay less. Get real people … don’t ask for the moon and expect to pay $5 for it!

I hope this will help shed some light!

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Same thing on iPhone, same price, but Canadian dollar is worth less.

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No, you are not covered.
Text messaging is not apart of your base plan. It is an add-on. So they can do whatever they want.

If you have a My5 plan for example, then you are covered in terms of fees for those 5 people.

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This makes no difference to the way it was before.

The new Code of Conduct only ensures the wireless carriers are up front about their policies. Their existing policies allowed contracts to be cancelled with “material changes”, but the thing is, no company ever changes the terms of the contract (your base price plan). They only change add-ons and overage rates, for example.

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“We do not change the material terms of our contracts with customers, without giving them at least 30 days’ notice. In the case of such material changes that are unfavourable to customers, we either give them the right to terminate the contract without any additional fees for early termination, or allow them to remain on the unchanged contract. This does not apply to changes that are required by law or regulation or changes to those services and features that do not have a fixed term commitment.”

Specifically the last piece about ‘do not have a fixed term commitment.’ makes me think this clause really doesn’t mean much at all to let people out.

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Carriers never change contract terms, such as your base $25 Price Plan. And if they do, they need your consent.

However, this code of conduct does not cover any other price increases such as add-ons or additional fees. Any features you have your account, such as Voicemail, can still be increased at the carrier’s discretion.

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The announcement comes as reports surfaced this week that plans on another tool designed to protect wireless customers were scuttled by Industry Canada allegedly because of pressure from the industry. University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist reported on his blog on Monday that an online calculator that would compare prices on plans across carriers was axed in June after federal officials met with the CWTA.
Prof. Geist wrote that “intense lobbying” from certain carriers, which were concerned that the calculator would promote cheaper plans, resulted in it being dropped.

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