Wireless spectrum auction results

Well the advanced wireless spectrum auction is over, finally. As for what we'll see once the dust settles and the new companies start operating a year or so from now it's hard to say. Globealive has a full country license and between Shaw, Videon and Eastlink the cable co's could make a go of it as a national carrier. Shaw has so far been the only company that has been very vocal about it's plans with Jim Shaw stating that they planned to be testing by the end of the year and launch in Calgary Mid 2009, with further rollouts planned in Vancouver, Edmonton and then smaller centres. There has been no mention from any of the new carriers as to what they may offer for plans but most TV speculation seems to focus on unlimited data, SMS and Voice for a fixed all in price possibly around $50 a month. That price for that plan would be amazing given the services it would come with, but certainly wouldn't make it a low cost option for people who just want a basic cellphone. We'll have to wait and see what they come up with. With all the furor over the new incoming message charges i'd expect to see some people clammering just to get to a new carrier. At the moment though it's all up in the air I'd expect to see the new carriers to start by naming their services and giving definate plans for a roll out date first then announcing pricing and plans very close to their launch date to prevent the incumbants from being able to make a competing plan right away.

Bell and Telus to charge for incoming text messages.

AHHHHH greed thy name is Cellphone Company. Seriously with all the complaints people have had about high prices of cellphones you'd think Telus and Bell would be working hard to show the value in their product. Apparently this is not the case and they have decided to just see what we'll put up with. I guess there is no point in having a virtual monopoly if you don't abuse it. I like the part in the article where they say they need the charges to cover increasing text messaging costs. What kind of costs would those be exactly? at the rate they're charging for a 160 character message that's about 11 characters per penny it seems unlikly that it is costing that much. Imagine if you got charged by your interent service provider 15 cents per e-mail or even worse an amount of a penny for every 11 characters you'd be having to sell the house to afford e-mail in no time. And yes i know you can avoid the charge by paying for a plan but that might set you back 5$ a month when you don't text enough to make that worth your while. There is of course another way to avoid the charge, you can switch to a competitor such as Virgin, Rogers or Fido. Granted if your stuck in a 3 year contract you're basically toast as the costs outside of the basic plan charges are not covered by it so you might be paying 3-5 $ extra a month just to get spam or messages from friends that you didn't really need. Personally I can't wait till the end of the spectrum auction and we get a look at some of the new players out there.

Telus and Bell get 0 stars out of 5 for changing their plans in a way that will drive consumers to seek other options when they look for cellphones.

Nobody Rewards you like Fido???

Now I've been a Fido customer for about 4 years now and have managed to amass around 100$ in Fido Dollars the only problem is how do i spend them? One would think that when i renewed my contract I'd be able to get that money off of a new phone. But that is not to be I have to purchase a phone at full price to use those dollars. Now I don't really need a second phone so that is kinda pointless. Well perhaps i could get some accessories? well kinda but only if I order them through customer service and have them shipped to me as I can't use them at the Fido store to purchase accesories. Also if I don't use the dollars soon, by the time my 4th anniversary comes up they're gone. So I guess I'll have to order some stuff from the website even though i kinda wonder why I'm going to have to make a trek out to UPS to pick up the package only to be told they can't find it.

Rating 2.5 Stars out of 5 as it's possible to get things using the Fido dollars it's just really really annoying.