The IT Nerd

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the totally impotent Industry Minister Jim Prentice who was talking tough with both Bell and Telus in regards to their plan to charge for incoming text messages has caved. The best he could apparently do is get guarantees that text messaging spam will be promptly rebated to the customer (Which for those of you not keeping score, Bell and Telus had said they were going to do anyway). He also said the following in a release titled “Minister Of Industry Stands Up For Consumers On Text Messaging Fees“:

“Given these undertakings by Bell Mobility and TELUS, I would encourage consumers dissatisfied with existing plans to seek alternatives. The telecommunications market in Canada is dynamic — choice is available. “

Question: Is this guy living in the same universe as the rest of us? There’s only a handful of choices in Canada to begin with. Realistically, you’ve only got three. Bell, Rogers/Fido, and Telus. Any other providers that are out there are simply reselling service from one of those three. So if you’re ticked at Bell or Telus (and you are not in a contract that will cost you a small fortune to break), your only real choice is to go to Rogers/Fido (who have proved to be no geniuses themselves with the whole iPhone circus before sort of caving under the pressure).

How is that choice? How is that standing up for consumers?

I guess the only hope if you don’t want to run to Rogers (and get Rogered in the process) is to hope that this class action lawsuit is successful. Clearly the Industry Mininster can only talk the talk, but won’t or can’t walk the walk.

This entry was posted on August 8, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell, Lawsuit, Telus, Text Messaging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.