Tech Blog

[#1]

Those dreaded roaming charges have funneled a lot of money out of people’s pockets over the years. What a way to come back down to Earth after a vacation only to find a gigantic bill from your cell carrier. Telus seems to want to offer at least some relief to this by halving the amount Canadians have to pay when travelling. In addition, a deal the carrier made with Skype also makes it easier to manage Skype credits through Telus’s billing system.

It’s no secret Canada is in the basement when it comes to ranking who pays the least for cell phone service, especially among developed countries. On average, Canada is ranked dead last in amount paid per megabyte, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Canadians pay about $25 per MB. The OECD average ranges from $9.48 to $13.52.

I’m still not sure how the carriers can justify slapping customers with a $10-$25 service fee for each megabyte of data they use when roaming. That’s right, each megabyte. A megabyte in today’s mobile terms is almost nothing. That’s why people who travel and don’t turn roaming off still get dinged, even though they didn’t browse a web page or bring in an email.

Telus is going to slash the rate it charges by half, which would at least put them within the OECD range. Much to no one’s surprise, Telus VP of Mobility Marketing Brent Johnson said the company would “still be profitable” after the 50 percent cut. Rogers and Bell have both indicated that they’ll wait a bit to see how things go before following suit. That’s just a translation for saying that they don’t want to do it, but they will to compete.

And that’s the word that lies at the centre of this: competition. Time will tell if this will lead to rate cuts for making calls while roaming, too.

The other piece of news is that Telus has made a deal with Skype to allow subscribers to buy Skype credits through their Telus accounts. Skype credit can be used to make calls to mobile and landlines using the software on a PC, Mac or smartphone.  

[#2]

When I go on vacation to Hawaii or across the border, I call ahead to Telus and ask for the North American Plan for a month.  Makes it very hand to have my emails and Google Maps when travelling.

[#3]

These fees are still gouging. The carriers should be obliged to tell you what the fee for a given download will be prior to sending it to you. If you're roaming and click a link, imagine a popup that says "downloading this item will cost $8. Proceed?" with a "NO" button. I'm sure that NO button would get a lot of use.

When the business model is "don't tell the customers what the charges are: just bill them and hope they pay: if they complain, reduce the amount" you have a fundmentally corrupt industry and company.

When carriers like Wind and Mobilicity can afford to give UNLIMITED data for a fraction of what the RoBelUs charge for their 1 GB plans, it should be obvious to everyone that we should all boycott the big three until their shareholders accept that customers aren't willing to be ripped off any more.