Wireless carriers hike prices across CanadaSmartphone plans now begin at $80/month

[mr_chin]

Originally Posted by saveth

Don't be surprised if they tell you they can't renew your plan because its no longer available. Rogers did that to me for a long time before a rep finnally let me renew my plan.
Posted via RS Mobile

I renewed my grandfather 6gb super plan with rogers.

When it was introduced, I signed a 3 year. After a year, I call for HUP because my S3 broke, and they said I have to sign a 2 year to get a S4 for $49.95 plus $50 HUP credit.

Paid off the 3 year contract and renewed a 2 year and kept my plan. I will try again for S5 or I might just buy it outright.

As long as you tell them that you want to renew the same plan or you're cancelling and going to another provider, I don't see why they wouldn't.

I don't see a reason for not letting you renew your current plan. They wouldn't gamble on losing a $60/month customer in hopes that you'll renew a $80 share everything plan. Who the hell would continue with the same provider if the force you to renew a different plan? If that's the case, I would go with another provider just because I don't want to give them my money anymore.

[saveth]

Originally Posted by Mr.HappySilp

As long as you aren't singing a new contract or getting a hardware upgrade there is no way to can just cancel your plan. In fact if you have no contract and isn't getting a phone with them they should even give you a 10% off your bill for bring in your own hardware. After your contract is over the phone is consider yours and they can't just cancel your grandfather plan.

I'm a seasoned veteran when it comes to rogers and telus Retentions. Rogers retention uses credits that expire so your plan will go up whenever your contract is over. You would think everything you brought up would be accurate, but one thing I learned when dealing with rogers is the reps usually make up their own rules depending on how they feel.

Telus has a better system of how they make there retention plans. Once my telus contract is over there are no expiring credits, my plan stays the same forever, unless I want a hardware upgrade. I've never dealt with bell so I won't comment. But between rogers and telus, telus is lesser or the two evils.

[Szeto]

^any of the big 3 care about loyalty at all? Rogers doesn't seem to care if you have been with them for 5-yr or 10-yr...

I got the same plan as you Saveth, 17.50 rentention + 30 for 6gb then 10 value pack for caller id/vm/unlimited txt

[saveth]

I've been a telus customer before a Rogers customer and when dealing with telus, usually one phone call is all I do every 3 years, when I needed to renew. That's how a customer of 15+ years has dealt with telus.
With Rogers, I call about 10 times in one week every three years in order to get what I want. Then I have to call them a month later because my bill is screwed up. Now that's how a customer or 12 years has to deal with Rogers. You're probably wondering why I put up with that crap. I get roughly the same services from both providers but I pay about 7 bucks less a month with Rogers, which works out to 250bucks in 3 years.
Posted via RS Mobile

[Szeto]

^with all the price hikes it makes Wind/Mobilcity plan 30 for unlimited almost everything including data look very attractive... only issue is how good is their network coverage

[aalex]

Originally Posted by Szeto

^with all the price hikes it makes Wind/Mobilcity plan 30 for unlimited almost everything including data look very attractive... only issue is how good is their network coverage

you get what you pay for, but $30 unlimited talk, txt and data without contract
I wouldn't complain

[JKam]

Originally Posted by aalex

you get what you pay for, but $30 unlimited talk, txt and data without contract
I wouldn't complain

Might as well give Wind a shot. There's no contract anyways so going back to Big 3 without a penalty is always an option.

From the few friends that have Wind, they have dead spots where I get dead spots on Rogers so it would be the same for me.

[Bonka]

Premium carriers are not going to give you the red carpet treatment after 1 phone call, no less a customer with a lower ARPU. Seniority is becoming less important for negotiation leverage as well and to ask for a feature rich plan AND to have a new release subsidized handset while trying to pay peanuts I'm not sure how anyone expects to get anywhere. Talk about backfire with the shorter contract terms.

Perhaps I'm short-sighted but while I do support more competition amongst the ROBELUS oligopoly it's not like we are short on carrier options. Why customers aren't buying phones outright to preserve their precious grandfathered plans is beyond me considering the long-term savings; maybe people are that hard up that they need subsidized phones...

[Lomac]

Self entitlement. That's why.

[bcrdukes]

Originally Posted by Bonka

Why customers aren't buying phones outright to preserve their precious grandfathered plans is beyond me considering the long-term savings; maybe people are that hard up that they need subsidized phones...

I could be wrong, but aren't the providers offering incentives for customers to "bring your own phone?"

I forgot where it was published, but for a carrier to be carrying premium phones like the iPhone, the profit margin on such devices are extremely low (or the cost to the carrier is very high) when subsidizing phones.

[TypeRNammer]

Originally Posted by bcrdukes

I could be wrong, but aren't the providers offering incentives for customers to "bring your own phone?"

I forgot where it was published, but for a carrier to be carrying premium phones like the iPhone, the profit margin on such devices are extremely low (or the cost to the carrier is very high) when subsidizing phones.

Rogers incentive is knocking off 20 bucks off the premium smartphone plans.

Such as the 1gb Canada wide plan for example, instead of it being $85 bucks, it's $65 if you BYOD

Still pretty expensive.

[Gnomes]

Originally Posted by Spoon

When Wind gets taken over. It's Shaw Open + Voice plan for me.

Unfortunately, shaw open is getting super slow and unsteady connections for me lately

[tiger_handheld]

Fair For Canada - Stand up for Canada

How best to lower cost of wireless?: Eliminate foreign restrictions

By: Steven Globerman
Posted: 08/28/2013 1:00 AM | Comments: 0
The federal government's upcoming auction of 700 MHz spectrum on Jan. 14 has created an unlikely public policy firestorm. The primary reason is the possibility the large U.S.-based wireless carrier, Verizon, will participate in the auction after completing its proposed acquisition of Wind Mobile, a small, domestically owned wireless carrier.
The controversy primarily surrounds the imposition of a limit on the blocks of spectrum that can be acquired by the three large incumbent carriers -- Bell, Rogers and Telus, as well as other rules affecting the acquisition or transfer of existing spectrum, and roaming and tower sharing arrangements that have been imposed by the government, ostensibly to facilitate the emergence of an additional large wireless carrier in Canada to compete against the "Big Three." In short, the rules for the upcoming auction can be seen as part of a broader government strategy to lower the costs of building out a national network by a would-be challenger to the Big Three.
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   • Stronger government regulation

The stated goal of the government's strategy is to increase competition in the wireless sector by reducing the market shares held by the Big Three. In fact, the risk is that by indirectly subsidizing the emergence of a fourth national wireless carrier, the government will impose industry-wide inefficiencies that end up harming consumers in the long-run.
Rules that limit the amount of spectrum that the Big Three can bid for at auctions, or acquire from other companies, effectively lower the prices that would-be rivals, possibly including Verizon, need to pay for spectrum.
Besides contributing to a loss of auction revenue, limits on how much spectrum the Big Three can acquire will thwart the goal of spectrum being acquired by the most efficient users, since efficient users should be willing to pay more than less efficient rivals for spectrum, but may be prohibited from doing so.
Since the goal of competition is to encourage efficient production, rules that handicap the acquisition of spectrum by the incumbents, either at auction or by licence transfers, are not in the consumers' best interests.
Proponents of limits on spectrum acquisition by the Big Three argue they will outbid rivals for spectrum because they can pass the added costs onto their customers, since they are cosseted from competition behind barriers to entry. In fact, recent studies suggest Canadian wireless carriers are as efficient in delivering services to customers as are carriers in a number of other countries, including the United States, where competition is deemed by observers to be quite "workable."
This is not to say increased competition in Canada would not call forth improved performances from incumbent carriers. Rather, it is to say that handicapping the ability of the Big Three to acquire spectrum and restricting them from charging a competitive price for access to their networks is not the way to improve the performance of the sector. The most direct and effective way would be to eliminate all foreign ownership restrictions on telecommunications carriers and broadcasting entities. Doing so would introduce a credible threat to managers of Canadian wireless carriers that they might lose their jobs if their companies are not at least as efficient as their foreign-owned counterparts. The threat of takeover by a rival is a powerful market mechanism to discourage corporate inefficiencies.
While eliminating foreign ownership restrictions for broadcasters and cable distributors is obviously highly controversial, it is a needed complement to a similar policy for telecommunications carriers, since Bell and Rogers hold broadcasting licences. It is also a complementary policy initiative given the ongoing convergence between telecommunications and broadcast distribution. In particular, Internet-based Wi-Fi is an increasingly robust substitute for cellular services, and entry into wireless by foreign-owned companies can increasingly be indirectly accomplished through cable and other broadcast distribution assets.
The emergence and growth of technological alternatives to cellular networks owned by the Big Three highlights the inappropriateness of the government's targeting some minimum number of large wireless carriers as the basis of its competition policy for the sector.
Combined with foreign ownership restrictions, this policy amounts to government determining how many competitors there will be in wireless, as well as the national identities of the carriers. This is more like central planning than market competition.

Steven Globerman is the Kaiser Professor of International Business at Western Washington University and is a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute. His latest study, An Assessment of Spectrum Auction Rules and Competition Policy, can be found at fraserinstitute.org.

[bcrdukes]

Fraser Institute lol