[clug-talk] Cell phones and Telus

[Martin Glazer]

Seeing we are discussing cell phones in Canada, have people read the 
recent article about how the gov killed the cellphone cost calculator? 
If you are interested - http://thestar.com/article/688547


Martin

Shawn wrote:
> There was a recent discussion on cell providers on SlashDot.  The 
> bottom line is that in Canada, they all suck - compared to the 
> services available outside North America.  There are horror stories 
> for every provider, and I personally have mine with Bell.
>
> I shifted from Bell to Rogers for two reasons.
> First was my calls were getting dropped on a regular basis.  This was 
> a newer phone and I would see calls dropped regularly (3 to 5 times a 
> month).  When I called them on it, they would tell me their "records" 
> only showed 3 dropped calls in the year.  When a business call 
> possibly worth a lot of money was dropped, that was the last straw in 
> this case. BTW, the majority of the dropped calls happened within 
> Calgary, and it didn't matter if I was stationary or mobile (i.e. 
> driving).
>
> The second reason is more mundane.  I had bought the OpenMoko phone to 
> play with.  It was GSM based, and the only GSM provider at that time 
> (still?) was Rogers.  So I paid $25 for the sim, signed up on a one 
> year contract (they wouldn't just sell me the SIM without a contract, 
> so took the smallest I could).  Turns out the OpenMoko's phone 
> capabilities are somewhat lacking (volume issues mostly) so I paid 
> full price for another phone and dropped in the same SIM with no 
> problems.
>
> This ability to swap SIM cards on the fly is a very convenient 
> feature.  Apparently the rest of the world has adopted GSM, and Canada 
> is one of the last hold-outs for CDMA phones.  So, if you want to be 
> able to travel, I think you'll have more flexibility with a GSM based 
> phone - which means Rogers or one of it's child companies.
>
> In terms of pricing and service, I'm not particularly happy with 
> Rogers.  I seem to be paying double what my plan is supposed to be - 
> my minute usage is a little more than the plan at $0.30/minute.  I've 
> changed plans, but need to wait a month or two for things to settle 
> down to the new price structure.  I also am getting a lot of dropped 
> calls. Especially since coming back from Vegas.  But, I'm reasonably 
> sure this is a case of me dropping my phone toooooo many times.  (New 
> phone in the near future for me...)
>
> HTH
>
> Shawn
>
> Dick Angus wrote:
>> Thanks for the quick responses. That was a lot of good information. I 
>> do need some out-of-Canada service so 711 looks to be out. Knowing 
>> that many of the others are off-shoots of Bell (I worked for them 
>> many decades ago - a fresh young programmer just out of school) I 
>> might give them a good look. Maybe their Solo service will work well 
>> for us.
>
> _______________________________________________
> clug-talk mailing list
> clug-talk at clug.ca
> http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
> Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php)
> **Please remove these lines when replying