As of my October bill, Rogers charges me 15 cents for incoming text messages. This is in addition to 15 cents for outgoing text messages I was being charged previously. The cost to the customer to get rid of this is $5 per month for a messaging pack with a generous 250 outgoing messages included. The cost to the provider to provide text messaging is essentially zero as the messages piggyback on the necessary control channel.
I also cannot get caller ID — an integral feature of the network since the first GSM standard, something that actually takes Rogers effort and costs money to disable — without paying an extra $10 each month for some insane cable-network-inspired value pack
which in addition to fundamental GSM features includes a lot of crap I don’t care about. (It’s $10 because getting just the texting would be $5 and getting 500 MB of BIS data is $25. That’s a subject for another day.)
This is on top of my $57.45 (legally advertised as $50) regular monthly fee for some number of minutes and 500 MB of data and BIS access.
But wait! Rogers Wireless ends system access charge, a September Toronto Star headline triumphantly proclaims. So my bill will only be $50.50, right?
System access charge, in case anyone doesn’t know, is the marketing-produced gimmick in which a company claims to charge a fee for system access on top of your other fee for system access and gets to advertise only the second fee. Just like you pay $20,000 for a $20,000 Benz, and $40,000 to drive it off the dealer’s parking lot.
Only, to sweeten the deal in addition to dropping its $6.95 a month system access fee, Rogers will add a “government regulatory recovery fee” in the amount of “$2.46 to $3.46″ (presumably, $2.46 to those who worship to a makeshift Rogers shrine, $3.46 to others), as well as raise the “base price” of its plans — that’s the advertised one — by $5.00. Congratulations, your price to sign up for a $50 plan just went down from $56.95 to $57.46 plus worship (plus more additional fees).
Of course, the Canadian wireless industry is well-known for pampering its customers. For instance, they’re reducing your local-calling area to serve you better. Of course, the very concept of long-distance calling has stopped existing sometime in 1980s, but who’s keeping score?
Mine is the best deal in Canada I was able to find in January 2009 coming with my own unlocked GSM BlackBerry (carrier subsidy = $0). Even that required a 1 year contract.
I’d say it’s a pretty healthy industry.
My name is Matt and I support this message.
I think it was a Telus executive (Could have been Bell/Rogers) who described the Canadian wireless industry as very competitive, and said new entrants wouldn’t change anything here. This is, of course, bullshit. Their profit margins would tighten up a bit if they killed long distance charges, gave everybody caller ID and incoming texts, and reduced their contract lengths. It certainly wouldn’t kill them.
The argument that Canada has a large area which drives up costs is bunk, too. Yes, Canada is a large country. Most of that doesn’t have cell phone coverage. While we may have 9 million square kilometers of land area, but less than 3 million of them have cell phone coverage (1.2 have Bell HSPA, and I’m guesstimating by looking at their map that’s half of their coverage area.)
There’s new entrants coming into the market, and maybe they’ll shake things up a bit, but I have my doubts. Public Mobile’s announced their plans for $40 flat rate talk and text, with a single crappy phone available on their completely obscure cdma frequency and tiny coverage area (Not even the whole GTA!). DAVE is launching next April in five cities, of which Waterloo is not one. They haven’t announced plans yet, but they’ll probably be a bit less ridiculous if they plan on attracting any customers at all.
Wind had tons of marketing about how they’re going to change up the market, but it looks like they’re dead in the water.
Screw cell phone providers. I don’t even want telephony. Just give me data.
Your problem is the hardasses at Rogers. Nominally, Rogers and Telus have very similar plans, but Telus are complete teddy bears about giving free stuff, especially when you quote other plans that are available on a prepaid basis.
Right now on Telus, I’m getting nationwide fav-5 for $25 a month, and call display for free. This is a $40 value according to their official plans, and I get it because I told them I’d switch to Koodo if they didn’t give it to me.
It’s only going to get better with Wind, too. I mean, holy crap the rumours are sweet.