OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!

Commissioned sales reps or their manager is on commission and is forcing their subordinates to push that crap.

I am very wary of commissioned sales people at the retail level. Their mentality always degrades to a slash and burn - do whatever is takes to sell the highest commissioned items and who gives a shit if it's the wrong thing or if the customer never comes back.

Compared with the rest of the developed world i.e. Europe and the US (in some respects) we are country miles behind in the adoption and the availability of technology. I know this comes to many as a surprise but if you have ever visited Western Europe i.e. UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark in the last 10- 15 years you know exactly what I mean. Even just take a trip to a Best Buy in the US, you will find products choices not available in Canada. Why I don't know but I suspect it has to do with unenlightened gov. regulations quelling the level of industrial competition. You want lower cell prices start asking yourself why can't I shop with Vodaphone, Orange, Tmobile, Verison, AT&T but being screwed by Rogers is a solely Canadian privilege. We don't need new government or parliament, what we need is bottom up Revolution. This Old English style conservatism that rules this land is spent and should be swept away!

That would only make sense if the government (the Conservative Party) weren't neoconservative. They aren't going to stick it to their main constituents; the business lobby and their sycophants. Of course, in these type of observations their will be neoconservatives claiming that the Conservative Party isn't Right Wing.

And nothing was lost

While this sounds like dishonest shenanigans on the part of the cellphone companies, I doubt it would have changed anything. Consumers are not the brightest bunch out there. As an aggregate group, we make some pretty stupid decisions based very little on long-term costs. Evidence the SUV. Many millions of (mostly) useless, overpowered, gas guzzling and expensive-to maintain sport futility vehicles were sold in the US, Canada and Australia over the past few years. Until oil hit $100/barrel, people were still buying them even though common sense could easily tell you that owning a giant gas-guzzler didn't make any sense. Similarly, people will flock to the carrier that offers the hand-held that they want, or a particular feature that they find desirable. The masses are generally willing enter into contracts to pay subsidization fees for handsets indefinitely, even after the handset is well paid for (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.). We also seem to be quite willing to pay $0.20 for text messages even though it has been publicly known for years that the messages are next to free for the companies to provide. If people cared about that, they would all be using Boost Mobile's unlimited plans.

In short, it's not the price of plans that attracts users to particular companies, it's the devices and services. It's odd, uneconomical behavior, but it's what people do. No amount of government web pages are going to change that. Until consumers actually start feeling a pinch in their wallet will they move to the more economical choice and start running the numbers and looking at the MPGs as it were.

In short, it's life in a capitalist society.

When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.

This is absolutely correct and when it's in the early stages like this, very few people recognize the danger. They don't seem to grasp that this is not a situation that can improve on its own. On its own, it can only get progressively worse and by the time it's immediately and outwardly obvious that they are living in a fascist state, it's often too late for the people to do much of anything about it other than cower and curse their lack of foresight.

From the summary:

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.

The attempt by the cell carriers to halt this project is all the more reason to go through with it. If anything, that should result in additional effort to not only produce the calculator but also to fund a media campaign so everyone knows it is available. The failure to understand this is all that you need to know in order to realize what a bunch of spineless, useless excuses for human beings (they are puppets really) our so-called leaders actually are.

When are people going to begin to realise that as far as consumers go there is no free market. Sure you can get a better deal at carrier B than carrier C but you will never get the BEST DEAL POSSIBLE because they don't want to give it to you. Profit is paramount, but these guys are really taking it too far.

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

No one with access to the code cares enough to post it to Wikileaks? Strange..... Does Canada execute whistle blowers or something? I always thought they were at least as free as the United States. Someone put it out there, and let it go viral. Screw the politicians. Better yet, hope they drown in the saunas and pools they build in their back yards with all that bribe money.

Unfortunately you need good honest people to become interested in politics too. Otherwise every election is just a "lesser evil" type of choice and you never get anything like the self-correcting system that you describe here. The ability to choose your form of corruption is not real honesty, just like the ability to choose your master is not real freedom.

OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!

Every business would rather not have competition. The problem here isn't that they tried to eliminate it, it's that the people who put the site up took it down. The deeper problem is that politicians yield to pressure from companies, thus giving said companies power beyond simply controlling their own property.

Nothing against their dignity as human beings, but by definition half the population is on the left-hand side of the bell curve.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
      -- H. L. Mencken (I'm sure this is true regardless of country)

The quote above is the "official" reason the project was canceled, and for once, only this once I promise, I believe the official line. This kind of project has been tried before by many-many people. As a software project alone, without the support of some strong coercive governmental standardization laws, it's a huge and an almost impossible undertaking.

But that actually IS a conspiracy theory. It's a valid one, too. When all or most of the companies in a market collude together to produce a situation that benefits them at the potential expense of everyone else, like what you just described, they are indeed conspiring. That they do it out of mutual self-interest and not on behalf of a more abstract agenda doesn't change this. That they do it by means of business decisions and not by secret meetings in smoky back rooms doesn't change this either.

We really need to get over the term "conspiracy theory." "Conspiracy theory" does not mean "instant way to halt all debate by stigmatizing your opponent," nor does it mean "instant excuse for dismissal without examination." It means "theory concerning people who work together in certain ways." There's nothing magical about the word "conspiracy" either. If you work at a company that makes widgets, you and all of your coworkers are conspiring to make widgets.

It's sort of like the word "sanction" in that it does not necessarily indicate a bad or undesirable activity, it's just often used that way and has taken on a connotation which excludes other things that it can mean. This is particularly true in the minds of people who don't really understand the words they are using. If you do a good deed and are rewarded for it, you have been sanctioned. However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way. Something similar has happened to the concept of a conspiracy theory and all of the well-meaning yet not very courageous people who tiptoe around that phrase when it really is the one that applies.

Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.

But that's the ultimate result of all unmitigated capitalist systems. Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates.

Market forces (via economies of scale/scope) almost always push towards a single fully vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly. That's why Wal-Mart beats out little mom & pop stores. So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations. But those things ultimately get in the way of corporate profits, so anyone supporting them is labeled a socialist (which is true in the sense that they care about society and social welfare over money and the economy). And if you're pro-capitalism then you must necessarily be pro-business and support deregulation.

The other problem is that, even though capitalism is supposed to be an economic theory, its effects tend to spill out into politics and other societal spheres. A capitalist society, by definition, is driven by capital. Wealth equates to power in a capitalist society. With wealth, you have access to better education, better health care, and better opportunities. Additionally, having better lawyers means you are treated better in the eyes of the law, and having powerful lobbies means you have exponentially more political influence than your less affluent brethren—and why shouldn't you? you have better nearly everything else, right? If Ayn Rand was right, and the captains of industry do carry the world on their shoulders, then why shouldn't they get to decide public policy? And if everyone's goal in life should be to get filthy rich and look out for only themselves, then can you really blame the politicians who sell out to powerful business interests?

So we shouldn't really be surprised by actions such as these. Everything from health, to education, to political influence is a commodity to be traded and sold. The economy has become an end in and of itself, and one that's more important than public good.

Although Rogers and Fido appear as two separate companies, they are technically the same. Rogers purchased Fido years ago, so they are now the same company. Perhaps the rep you spoke with at Fido was new or just really didn't care to the same extent as the Rogers rep.

Why even show them the phone at all? Or if you must, bring in a older GSM phone that uses the same sim card. Companies have no compunction about lying to you so why should you tell them the truth when a lie will do? The real world plays hardball, so should you.

"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.

That sounds precisely like what President Obama and his minions are doing here in the USA currently, even including the accusations of being "unpatriotic", "racist", and many others that have been leveled at people who are in opposition to his sweeping changes, insane spending in a recession, and takeover of the private sector. As you say, it's easy to spot even in it's early stages...it's just that one has to be willing to accept what ones' eyes and ears tell them, which has been the problem with people here in the US.

There's a reason why Obama has surrounded himself with self-avowed socialists and communists and '60s radical-types. It's not just poor vetting either. He's just gathering the people that have the expertise with the type of government he plans to transition us to, like Van "Che" Jones. When he vowed to "fundamentally change America" he was being perfectly honest.

Socialism/fascism/communism would be a fundamental change from capitalism.

Strat

The Canadian bureaucrat is a special breed of person ... Orwell spoke of their kind often while writing 1984. And our bureaucrats are world class too. They can discuss the benefits of keeping data and information from citizens WITH A CITIZEN, and are able to keep a straight face doing it. The trick is they actually believe it.

There is no leak because they wouldn't dream of hurting the machine that is THEIR government. Just ask our former Prime minister Mulrooney what happens when you fire a few of the extra pork barrelers. Twenty years latter they are STILL trying to hang him.

The sooner the world realizes Canada is controlled by fascists, liberal and conservatives alike, the sooner they can start treating us with the correct amount disdain.

But somehow, YOU'RE the one who's "anti-market" if you want to see this service work.

You can't have PhD's in every single area of your life. And please don't bring up financial services when even the knowledgeable (those who do this for a living) ran head forward into the the wall. And how do you negotiate with a multi-billion dollar company? They'll just tell you to go away.

Bah. Who am I fooling. Money is God, customers are Opponents (if not the Enemy), and if they buy your product and it's bad for them, they deserve it and they should feel bad!

No matter how educated I might want to be about the options available, I'm still limited to choosing among just those options. I'd like a cellular plan whose cost covers only the network portion and doesn't include a device subsidy. I've looked, and AFAICT, none of the major operators are willing to sell me just a connectivity plan.

I've been on the same plan for about seven years now because I'm a grandfathered Cingular user. Any plan I might switch to costs more for the same level of service as I have now. In comparison to the cost of wireline telephony or Internet connectivity, rising prices for cellular service make absolutely no sense. Since it seems likely that the cost of providing cellular service must have declined in the past decade as past investments in plant are paid off, I'm guessing the carriers are making some significant profits.

I'm all for educating consumers, but even an educated body of consumers can't do much when confronted with oligopoly pricing. There's no "free" market in cellphone service that I can see. If there were, I'd be able to go to AT&T or T-Mobile or some competing GSM carrier, buy a voice-only plan for $30/month, get a SIM chip, and stick it in my existing phone.

Please pardon how I put this, but it's a real pleasure to hear from someone who doesn't have his head up his ass. The two party duopoly is one of the pillars of our current situation, and there is unfortunately a shortage of people who can realize that on their own as you have done. As you seem to understand, the general naivete and encouraged ignorance has become so widespread that few people personally know the sharp insight and intuitive brightness which are not only available to human beings, but are in fact our birthright.

Naturally the ability to realize your own inner genius is the first thing that must be stolen from the members of the public in order to promote the kind of stupidity that would have ever allowed our status quo to happen. That, to me, makes this a different kind of evil far beyond the mere desire to be in charge and control others.

However, eventually everyone must learn to compete in the real game where there are winners and losers and ignorance has a price tag attached. If you don't like a deal or believe that the other side is holding out or obfuscating then threaten to walk away and follow through if you aren't satisfied. People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.

Part of the problem is that the price tag is not high enough. I say that because it obviously has not provided the necessary incentive to render self-correcting all of this widespread ignorance. To put it simply, that's because a good parasite does not kill its host. That's why major corporations accommodate, encourage, and coddle various forms of ignorance. They rarely or never refuse a sale on the basis of the customer not understanding what he or she is buying. At the same time, they know that if the price tag for such ignorance became too high, that if they abused it too much, there would be a severe customer backlash and a public effort to prevent a reoccurrence. They would be killing their own cash cow if they allowed that to happen.

The only real solution I know is to act on principle. A principled person doesn't want to be ignorant and will take steps to prevent it, whether or not a high price tag is attached to it. It's simply the right thing to do. A principled person doesn't care to be taken advantage of, whether the perpetrator stands to gain millions of dollars or a single penny. For that matter, a principled person does not sign something like a mortgage contract without fully understanding it first. Such people are not known for complaining about things like "predatory lending."