Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada 214
inject_hotmail.com writes "Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shenanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian taxpayers funded a 'Cell Phone Cost Calculator' so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings. The calculator wound up being yanked a couple weeks before launch. Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues, 'Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.' Moving forward, Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government: 'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, in the US, you can walk in to Safeway and get a $10 TracFone.
Try Japan:
To buy a pre-paid cell phone (you have to buy the phone, even if you just want the SIM card), you have to be registered with city hall, have the right kind of visa (not a tourist visa), and have a landline you can be contacted at.
And then if you don't buy credit for a year the "contract" expires, even though it is a prepaid cell phone. Service costs ¥1500/month, which includes a ¥300/month unlimited SMS/MMS plan.
Although, having unlimited SMS/picture emails for ¥300/month is really nice. Too bad voice is ¥95/min.
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:3, Informative)
Yup, it's pretty awful. Not QUITE as bad as you paint it though. We certainly do know what unlocked phones are. I had one before getting an iPhone. Ten years ago it wasn't worth it - the contract cancellation fee was $200 and you generally got more of a subsidy than that on the phone. Now, it probably is worth it - the contract cancellation fee is $400 + $100 if you have a data plan. We also know what SIM cards are. Not that it helps much unless you go to Europe - service initiation fees in the US usually make it not worthwhile to buy a local SIM when you go there, unless you're staying for a long time.
The government did feel there needed to be more competition in the cellular market and brought in various initiatives to get at least one more GSM network up and running. I haven't heard what became of that, though building a national network here will quite reasonably take a while.
We have lots of prepaid SIM cards. You can get them at the grocery store. There are no sales goons. Just the checkout girl who couldn't care whether you're buying a SIM card or a People magazine or a bunch of bananas.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:2, Informative)
It's corporatism, actually. Fascism goes a bit further with the State.
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Don't tell Rogers it's an iPhone. Just tell them you have an unlocked phone and need a SIM card. NOT over the phone - go in person to a mall kiosk or store. Get them to start doing the paperwork, THEN show them the phone, when asked. They'll make a big deal out of "checking" it to see if it really is unlocked. But since they've started the paperwork already....
CUB Cell Phone Saver (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Informative)
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the ugly truth:
Rogers is a horrible company that will treat you like crap, and generally try to rip you off... they're also the best of the bunch. (Actually, I find Fido, which is owned by Rogers, but technically a separate company is a bit better) Rogers will at least work with you a little sometimes, Bell will wait until you're on a contract, then screw you, then say "oh well, have a nice day". Telus is about the same.
Here's a great example of Bell/Telus customer service; A friend of mine bought a Telus blackberry after her old phone started to die. She had frequently been disconnected for failure to pay her bill, despite the fact that she always paid her bill, so I really don't know why she stayed with Telus, but that's another bag of snakes... back to the point. So this phone has horrible issues. She takes it back to get it exchanged for a working one, which apparently she has to wait 3 weeks+ for. Next phone, more issues, exchange again. Gets HER FIRST BLACKBERRY BACK as a "new" phone. Finally when that one doesn't work, she gets a different model which she has to spend hours on the phone over the course of a week to get them to agree to. Here's the kicker; ~$40 charge every time the phone#/account was switched to a different handset. That's right they charge to switch from your broken handset, to a working one (which in this case was also broken).
And I'd STILL deal w/ Telus before Bell. Everyone's got at least one horror story with any given provider, and they're all a bunch of pricks, but having a lot of experience w/ pretty much all of the carriers here, I can't recommend anyone other than Fido or Rogers. It's a case of picking the least of the evils. Kinda like picking your personal bank. (Which is TD btw, or at least stay the HELL away from CIBC!!!)
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Wait, you were talking about cell phone companies, right?
Rogers is a bunch of bottom feeding sharks. Telus is worse, and I've heard Bell is even worse.
Telus is so bad they had to start up a whole other brand (Koodoo) that, as their primary marketing strategy, makes fun of all the established companies (including Telus). Rogers ALSO has an alter ego (Fido) but at least they bought Fido to suppress competition rather than creating it to escape their bad reputation.
Canada's other (comercial) cell calculator (Score:3, Informative)
I'm hesitant to say this 'cause I know ./ is going to crash it,
But there's actually a privately developed calculator in beta right now.
cellplanexpert.ca [cellplanexpert.ca]
It's a work in progress and txting+data is yet to come, but otherwise it's very comprehensive. You can get a feel for how complicated plans actually are in Canada (if you care to actually research) from the long questionnaire process.
The big problem in Canada is that in most provinces, there are only 2 independent networks Rogers (GSM) and "Belus" (Bell in Ontario & Quebec + Telus in BC and Alberta - the two are co-dependant on each other's network -CDMA variants). So providers and all their various subsidiaries compete on who can best obfuscate the highest prices, not who can lower them the most. This means there are a plethora of options, features, hidden rates and costs to wade through. This might change if the new carriers emerging from the recent spectrum auction actuall stay independent, and are not bought out by the big players like the last round. In provinces where there's even 3 independent players (Saskatchewan, Manitoba) it's significantly more competitive.
Full disclaimer - it's my site.
Re:Frustrating! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.
Are you really that shallow? Serious. Fucking. Question. Because if you can't tell the difference between that, and what I was talking about, then there's really no point in discussing this with you. For the more perceptive folks who happen to read this thread, this is an educational opportunity. This, folks, is what denial looks like. Its most distinguishing feature is that it immediately dismisses the valid points I raised while making absolutely no effort to refute it, and does so while attempting to appear superior as evidenced by the overall smugness.
There's something even more dangerous than a wannabe dictator or a government that is heading in the wrong direction. That would be the many people with their heads in the sand who want so badly to believe that "it can't happen here" that they create the excuses, dismiss the warning signs, and ridicule the aware to the point that they virtually guarantee that it WILL happen here. If it doesn't happen here, that will be no thanks to these myrmidons.
Folks, this is so simple it's absurd. Government is not a perfect institution, which we know for a fact because there are no perfect institutions. We also know for a fact that no institution lasts forever. Because it is not perfect, and cannot last forever, government has a failure mode. Be it a military dictatorship or a police state, the failure mode of modern Western government is the totalitarian state. In order to share the parent poster's naive attitude, you would have to believe that both of these are true:
God damn it, both of those are false and you know it. You know it even if you won't admit it.
When a corporation can shut down a government Web site because it contains factual information that the corporation does not want people to know, that is one of your early warning signs. Go ahead and make excuses for it and tell me it's perfectly harmless; your reasoning will be limp-wristed and and your justifications will be half-hearted because you know deep down that I am speaking the truth.
Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada (Score:2, Informative)
Re:No leaks? (Score:3, Informative)
Contrary to popular belief, Tim Horton's is not coffee. It is brown coloured water that tastes strange - at best.