The Canadian telecommunications industry is essentially a oligopoly, group of corporations in collusion that strive to maintain consistent profit margins by cooperatively screwing the consumer from as many angles as possible. There are piles of evidence for this. Telus and Bell (the only two CDMA carriers in the country) insistuted fees for incoming text messages at exactly the same time. So now they get to charge twice for the same tiny packet of data. The equivalent of charging you to mail a letter, then charging the recipient to pick it up.

In a healthy competitive environment Rogers would have seen this as an opportunity to differentiate their service by not implementing the same pricing structure. That way they could take customers away from Bell and Telus. However, that didn’t happen. Rogers knows that they stand to make more profit by implementing the same fees than they would by engaging in a price war, so starting in July, they will. This is price fixing. It may not be conspiratorial or organized, but it’s still price fixing.

This adds to the already ridiculous idea that we are paying extra for text messaging to begin with. They are not charging for this service because it costs them money. It doesn’t. In fact it’s built so deeply into the cellular system that it actually costs them more money to monitor it and bill you than it would to just let you have it for free. When you pay a premium for an unlimited messaging service you are essentially subsidsizing the cost of tracking and billing other customers per message. At 20 cents per message you are paying $1300 per MB for that data, and because they bill twice for every message, they get $2600 per MB. This is price gauging at an unbelievable level.

And text messaging is just one facet of a hugely complicated prcing structure thats designed specifically to prevent you from directly comparing competitors and get you to pay the largest possible amount for the littlest possible service. They fracture the service into as many small pieces as possible and charge ridiculous prices for them individually in order to make the bundles look cheaper by comparison. 

They charge separately for call display, text messaging, email, voice, long distance and internet even though it’s all similar data all travelling over the same network. (And charging for long distance is just lying, as if it costs more $0.35 a minute more to send data to Waterloo than it does to send data to Mississauga.) It would be as if when you purchased an internet connection you had to pay for a certain number of IM’s per month, extra for accessing sites from the US, extra for watching video, extra for uploading files, and extra for using Skype. There would be protests in the streets if that was attempted, but it’s tolerated on cellular service because we’ve been beaten by them for so long that we don’t think to call the police anymore.

But changes are coming. There is no technical reason that you even need a voice plan or call display or voicemail or text messaging at this point. All you need is a smartphone, a data plan, Skype, and Google Talk. You could get about 1000 minutes of Skype on a 500MB data plan. But oh right, I almost forgot, you also need the cellular service providers to allow Skype on their network, and allow you to install it on the phone that you own. And that won’t happen without a huge increase in competition or a government intervention.

The Canadian telecommunications industry is essentially a oligopoly, group of corporations in collusion that strive to maintain consistent profit margins by cooperatively screwing the consumer from as many angles as possible. There are piles of evidence for this. Telus and Bell (the only two CDMA carriers in the country) insistuted fees for incoming text messages at exactly the same time. So now they get to charge twice for the same tiny packet of data. The equivalent of charging you to mail a letter, then charging the recipient to pick it up.

by dulcie

In a healthy competitive environment Rogers would have seen this as an opportunity to differentiate their service by not implementing the same pricing structure. That way they could take customers away from Bell and Telus. However, that didn’t happen. Rogers knows that they stand to make more profit by implementing the same fees than they would by engaging in a price war, so starting in July, they will. This is price fixing. It may not be conspiratorial or organized, but it’s still price fixing.

by sashafatcat

This adds to the already ridiculous idea that we are paying extra for text messaging to begin with. They are not charging for this service because it costs them money. It doesn’t. In fact it’s built so deeply into the cellular system that it actually costs them more money to monitor it and bill you than it would to just let you have it for free. When you pay a premium for an unlimited messaging service you are essentially subsidsizing the cost of tracking and billing other customers per message. And at 20 cents per message you are paying $1300 per MB for that data, and because they bill twice for every message, they get $2600 per MB of what is essentially pure profit. 

by aresauburn™

And text messaging is just one facet of a hugely complicated prcing structure thats designed specifically to prevent you from directly comparing competitors and get you to pay the largest possible amount for the littlest possible service. They fracture the service into as many small pieces as possible and charge ridiculous prices for them individually in order to make the bundles look cheaper by comparison. 

They charge separately for call display, text messaging, email, voice, long distance and internet even though it’s all similar data all travelling over the same network. (And charging for long distance is just lying, as if it costs more $0.35 a minute more to send data to Waterloo than it does to send data to Mississauga.) It would be as if when you purchased an internet connection you had to pay for a certain number of IM’s per month, extra for accessing sites from the US, extra for watching video, extra for uploading files, and extra for using Skype. There would be protests in the streets if that was attempted, but it’s tolerated on cellular service because we’ve been beaten by them for so long that we don’t think to call the police anymore.

by malthe

But changes are coming. There is no technical reason that you even need a voice plan or call display or voicemail or text messaging at this point. All you need is a smartphone, a data plan, Skype, and Google Talk. You could get about 1000 minutes of Skype on a 500MB data plan. But oh right, I almost forgot, you also need the cellular service providers to allow Skype on their network, and allow you to install it on the phone that you own. And that won’t happen without a huge increase in competition or a government intervention.

by acroll