Fixing Canada's Wireless Problem

Wireless Communications in Canada (by which I mean hoser cell phones) is in a pathetic state. There are three names for this problem, which are Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Most Canadians know these three as the big players in our wireless industry. And they suck.

Before I explain, let me first state what the Big Three have done right. Number one, they exist; wireless technology is becoming more essential to humanity's technological development, and without a company providing wireless communication services to the masses, Canada would lag behind in general in this field. Second, they have decent coverage in most of Canada's heavily-populated areas. Providing cell phone coverage is always a cost/profit thing for wireless companies: if they erect a tower to cover an area, will they be able to get enough subscribers to cover their construction and maintenance costs? So, if you live in a poorly-populated area (like many parts of Northern Ontario) and feel like shooting me a snide comment about cell phone coverage in "most of Canada," shut up and realize that you probably don't represent enough of a profit margin to the Big Three to be worth bringing you coverage. Honestly.

What follows is my list of what the Big Three can do to improve the state of wireless communications in Canada. These come from my experience as both a Canadian wireless customer and as a customer service provider for American cell phone companies.

1. Give Us Minutes
The average American cell phone user gets 500-1000 anytime minutes a month. That's their overall pool of minutes, not counting any free calling periods like nights and weekends. In Canada, 500 monthly minutes is considered a "premium" amount meant for high-end users. Minutes into the thousands amount are typically reserved for business plans. The hell? Why would Canadians need to talk less than their American counterparts? That's hardly the implication. Fact is, two of the big three in Canada also provide landline services, and routinely encourage customers to "bundle their services" together. They'd rather encourage their customers to purchase both services - smart from a business standpoint, but bad for the growing number of Canadians for whom a landline is impractical.

Giving Canadians less minutes for their dollar helps no one. It may mean that customers get hit with overage charges more often, but that's temporary profit - customers who see their bills soar due to overages either change their talking habits, switch services, or stop using their cell phones altogether.


2. Quit Billing Us For What We Cannot Control
From what I hear of our British neighbours across the ocean, their cell providers have come to a realization: billing customers for their incoming calls doesn't make sense. A person may have a reasonable expectation of how many calls they receive, but most people have no clue. Incoming calls are something almost completely outside of a person's control. What sense is it to bill customers for minutes used when they cannot reasonably control the amount of people calling them (aside from turning off their phone)?

Consider this: you're flipping through the channels on your TV when you come across a movie - one you know is available to rent from your local video store. You watch about ten minutes of the movie before switching to something else. Does the video store now have the right to bill you for a movie rental? After all, you viewed the movie, at least in part; it is analogous to using a cell provider's network when you receive an incoming call. Since the video store would bill you for a rental if you actually went into the store and rented the movie yourself, does it then stand to reason that you should pay for the rental if you happen to accidentally view the movie at another time? This analogy isn't perfect, I know, but I hope it serves to illustrate my point.


3. Standardize Your Damn Plans
Right now in Canada (and in the US), most providers offer plan like this:
"The Stuporpendous Single Plan offers X anytime minutes, Y Night & Weekend Minutes, free calling on National Holidays, and z bonus text messages."
"The Crapalicious Single Plan offers X+10 anytime minutes, free Nights & Weekends, five free calling buddies, and Y kb of data usage"
"The OMGWTFBBQ plan offers X+20 anytime minutes, early Nights & Weekends for free, unlimited data usage and Z text messages."

Everything's a package deal. Want free nights & weekends? You've gotta go with Crapalicious or OMGWTFBBQ, even if they have way too many minutes. Want unlimited data access? OMGWTFBBQ is your only option. In some cases, some of these features will be available as add-ons. Of course, you will need to have a plan that's compatible with the add-on; and I mean this both for the customer level of things and for the back-end of whatever account system the providers use. During my time as a CSR for an American wireless provider, I encountered quite a few problems adding some of the newer, more popular add-ons to accounts whose plan conflicted with the add-on. Usually it was because the plan was a package that included a partial version of what the add-on was going to give. The customer couldn't "upgrade" from this partial service just by purchasing the add-on. They had to change their whole plan to make it work (and lock into a new contract in the process).

Cell phone plans should be designed by game designers. You should be able to make a cell phone plan the same way you create a character. Pick each element individually: number of minutes, free calling times, text messages, data access, whatever. Think of it as choosing skills and feats for a character, rather than being handed a stack of shitty pregenerated characters and having to choose.


4. Voice Mail Is Not A Luxury Item
In the United States, almost all plans come with voice mail as a standard feature. Voice mail is essential for two reasons: one, despite their portability, people do not have their phones on them at all times, nor are they able to answer calls at all times (such as when the phone is dead, out of service, or when answering the phone would be inappropriate). Two, more people are choosing to use cell phones as their only means of telephone contact, and thus can't rely on a landline and a good ol' fashioned answering machine to collect their messages for them. In the States, they recognize this. In Canada, it seems to be a hard concept for the Big Three to grasp.

Just adding voice mail onto a cell line in Canada costs, on average, $7 a month extra. On top of that, voice mail is administrated by a third party company, so you're billed airtime for checking your voice mail over your cell phone. It is possible to incur overage charges just for checking your messages too often.

5. Fuck the System Access Fee
In Canada, the Big Three each include an additional charge in their billing called a "system access fee." It's explained exactly as it sounds... it is meant to cover the cost of having your phone connect to the network and use airtime. However, what the hell is the other amount they keep charging a month, the one associated with your cell phone plan? Just to give an example, my fiancée and I are on a family plan shared between two phones. $35 a month gets us our meager airtime, unlimited local talk between each other, and free weekend calling. Each line gets billed an additional $7 to access the system (so an extra $14 total on our bills every month). Apparently that $35 monthly fee gives us our airtime, but doesn't cover the cost of connecting to the network to use that airtime. What the fuck?

In my frank opinion, the system access fee is either an artificial padding of charges, or is a technique used by the Big Three to avoid folding the cost into the price of the plan itself and, thus, make it appear cheaper in advertisement.