Comments on: Mounting anger over Canadian mobile pricing

By: Continued cellular disatisfaction » VoIP Buzz!

Continued cellular disatisfaction » VoIP Buzz! — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:07:19 +0000

[...] saunderslog.comSource: saunderslog.com The drums continue to beat this morning for lower cost cellular service in [...]

By: » Mounting anger over Canadian mobile pricing

» Mounting anger over Canadian mobile pricing — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 12:05:28 +0000

[...] You can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here [...]

By: Jim Courtney

Jim Courtney — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:16:50 +0000

The head to head comparison has a link on the sidebar of the Globe and Mail story.

By: Sean O'Mahony

Sean O'Mahony — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:54:23 +0000

I think Telus definitely has the resources Alec and it would be a long-term play. We *need* at least two GSM operators in Canada. Geez when I lived in Luxembourg there were four and there are only 400,000 people in Luxembourg.

Of course Rogers can reduce their prices but Telus has the horsepower to weather that storm.

There is the additional juicy target of all the inbound roaming. Rogers collects every single penny from every external GSM customer who comes to Canada. This is lovely revenue that becomes available to a second GSM operator.

If only I had a few hundred million myself I’d go for it ;-)

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:36:04 +0000

I did the same, Frances, while in the US.

By: Alec

Alec — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:35:12 +0000

Do you think Telus as the cash to actually do a GSM build out, Sean? If I was Ted Rogers, I’d drop the prices as soon as that started, and make Telus’ build-out unprofitable.

By: Francis Moran

Francis Moran — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:34:22 +0000

If the rape and abuse is intolerable while operating on Rogers’ own network, the pain is all the more acute when roaming abroad.

Fortunately, there is fix to this.

I recently wrote about how I slashed what had been upwards of $200 in cellular charges for a typical week of business in Britain down to less than $20 by unlocking my Rogers phone and buying a U.K. pay-as-you-go SIM. (And calls back to Canada were $.08/minute!)

By: Sean O'Mahony

Sean O'Mahony — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:23:38 +0000

I can’t see why Rogers in particular would reduce its pricing — they are just maximising the return on their very smart acquisition of Microcell.

I’ve written about this subject many times before myself. I cannot see how the CRTC is going to force Rogers to do anything as they were the fools that allowed GSM to be controlled by a single carrier. Every other GSM operator in the world must look at the Canadian market and just drool.

My particular view is keep the CRTC out of the picture completely. They are completely incompetent.

Leave it to the market. Darren Entwhistle over at Telus is a smart operator. If I was sitting where he is I would be getting myself a GSM licence and opening a second front to cream some of the profits away from Rogers.

Over at Cubic we are trying to help. If you are leaving Canada and heading abroad *don’t* use Rogers for your international roaming — get a MAXroam SIM. For example if you are in the UK calling back to Canada Rogers will charge you $2.00 a minute. We will charge you between $0.60 and $0.84 a minute.

Or, as Alec suggests, get yourself a good Wi-Fi handset (sorry, not from Rogers, they don’t carry them), find yourself a hotspot and go crazy.