Bell Canada to charge 15 cents per Twitter SMS even with an unlimited plan

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/News/Canadian+tweets+cheap/1328869/story.html

by ingenium • 17 years ago

25 10 17 years ago

As a Canadian this comes as no surprise to be. Bell and Rogers (basically the only two telecoms in Canada) have always pulled shenanigans like this against their customers. Canadian cell phone plan rates are ridiculous, and data even more so. When I lived in the US I had a ton of minutes and unlimited data for $50 a month. In Canada I pay this just for a handful of voice minutes.

And this is one of the major reasons why the tech field is constantly failing in this country. Our government (both parties that matter, anyway) have no interest in encouraging fair telecommunication prices to drive innovation.

cperciva• 17 years ago

Our government (both parties that matter, anyway) have no interest in encouraging fair telecommunication prices to drive innovation.

Well, the high wireless data rates were one of the stated reasons for last year's spectrum auction -- I don't think any of the companies which bought spectrum last year have started operating yet, but I'd guess that rates will come down once they're up and running.

wmoxam• 17 years ago

That could be a long ways off with the expense of building a network and the difficulty in raising capital these days ...

comatose_kid• 17 years ago

Here are details about one company, but no mention on rollout dates:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM...

evdawg• 17 years ago

It seems that this article is wrong-- today Twitter confirmed that there are no additional fees. http://blog.twitter.com/2009/02/bell-mobility-and-twitterno-...

pbrown• 17 years ago

The keyword is "incoming":

"Twitter and Bell have agreed that Bell customers on the company's text messaging bundles will be able to receive unlimited incoming Twitter SMS messages at no extra charge."

patrickg-zill• 17 years ago

It seems that the bigger the telecom firm, or the greater their level of incumbency, the more evil they are.

I have seen this as mid-size companies like Broadwing and Telcove got absorbed by Level3, and the quality of customer service going down while Level3 invented additional charges on set-price contracts out of thin air.

marbletiles• 17 years ago

I don't think it'd be any great loss for Twitter to dump SMS entirely.

Stripping out SMS support is what really allowed it to take off in the UK. When you think that there's even a chance everybody is getting yr minutae fired to your phone, it acts as a rate limiter.

Zev• 17 years ago

Tweeting via texting is a big plus for me - I don't have an iPhone/Android phone with a data plan.

mrtron• 17 years ago

Bell/Rogers have horrible cell phone pricing.

Before the iPhone came to Canada about 6 months ago, they were charging 30$ per month for 5 megs of data usage. In 2008.

Why? Because Blackberry users here are mostly corporate users that don't pay their own phone bills, and they were nailing those corps for massive overage bills on data.

Such scamish companies and they are the only 2 options for most of Canada.

Bell Canada to charge 15 cents per Twitter SMS even with an unlimited plan

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