The IT Nerd

When Canadians need a new smartphone, they typically go to their carrier and get the phone of their choice. I’ve done that and I am sure that you’ve done that as well.

The problem is that it’s costing Canadians more money to do that. Here’s why.

When you go to your carrier to get a smartphone, you pay a lower up front cost. But you then pay a “subsidy” over the next two years to cover the rest of the phone’s cost. Note the quotes because it actually isn’t a “subsidy.” It’s more like a loan that you’re paying back with interest. So, by the time it’s all over you would have paid more than what the phone is worth. Another point worth considering is that if you ever wanted to change carriers within that two year term, you’ll have to pay off  that”subsidy” in full. Finally if you wanted a better price plan, that may be difficult to get from the carrier you’re with. If you can get a better price plan, you can bet that there will be strings attached. Such as renewing the two year agreement. Now, some of you will point out that paying for a phone up front is expensive. I get that as I just paid almost $1200 for a new iPhone 7 Plus which is not a small amount of money. But in the long run I am saving money as I am not paying for the costs associated with a “subsidy.” Thus it’s worth it to me.

Another factor in why you should get an unlocked phone is that Canadian carriers often have a bring your own device plan that can save you 10% or more. That 10% savings can add up quickly given how expensive carrier plans are in this country. It also gives you the option of going month to month with a carrier. That way, if you don’t like the coverage that carrier has, or they do something that annoys you for example, you have the option to move to another carrier. To illustrate this, I will use my experience since I started using an unlocked phone 6 years ago. Until last November, I have used Bell as I had a very good deal with them in terms of voice and data. But then switched to Rogers in November when they offered a better deal than what Bell was offering me. In both cases, I was month to month. I truly have no allegiance towards a carrier as it is all about which carrier will offer me the best coverage and speed for the lowest price.

Travelling is another factor. And when I say travelling, I mean to places other than the USA. Every Canadian carrier has reasonable rates to roam with your smartphone to the US of roughly $5 to $7 a day which I can live with and I am sure you can as well. But you can typically do much better if you have an unlocked phone as you can usually buy a local SIM card and get much cheaper rates in your destination. Let me give you two examples:

• When I traveled to Australia on business a couple of years ago, I got an Optus SIM card that gave me unlimited voice, data, voice mail, 4G coverage and 500 MB of data a day for $2 AUD a day, which is basically $2 CAD. I was there for 5 days so that was a total of $10.
• On a trip to India last year, I got a Vodafone SIM that gave me unlimited everything except for data which was capped at 1.4 GB for 675 INR which is $13 Canadian for the week that I was there.

When you consider that Bell, Rogers, and Telus offer you international roaming for $10 a day, it’s easy to see that the clear choice is to have an unlocked phone. The only potential downside is that you lose access to your Canadian number while you’re travellng. If that’s not a factor for you, then this is a no brainer.

Finally, buying an unlocked phone means that you avoid having to pay your carrier or a third party to unlock your phone. Canadian carriers are legally obliged to unlock your phone if you’ve been with them for more than 90 days. But that can cost you $50 or more. You could go to a third party shop and have them do it for you. But that’s going to cost money as well and I have never really felt comfortable recommending third party services as I am not confident that they will unlock the phone and not do something to it. Maybe I am being paranoid on that front. I am not sure. But it makes more sense to me that I avoid all of that by getting an unlocked phone up front.

Canadians pay way too much for their telco services as illustrated by this example. Thus it only makes sense that you as a consumer do everything possible to get the best deal for yourself on that front. By buying an unlocked phone, you can take some of that money that would normally go into the bonus plans of telco execs, and put it towards your next vacation, car or night out with your spouse. After all, it’s your money. Shouldn’t you get to hold onto it?

Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows that I am no fan of the big three Canadian carriers. Specifically, Rogers, Telus and Bell. They do a lot of things that make mine, and other Canadians blood boil. That list has had a new thing added to it. CBC News has found that minors, as in those under the age of 18, can authorize data usage beyond the $50 limit set out by the CRTC. That means that bills in the thousands of dollars can be run up by anyone who has a cell phone on a shared account. Keep in mind that the same big three carriers give people a real hard time if for example, someone’s spouse wants to make an account change on their behalf even though both names may be on the account in question.

Clearly this is a cynical back door method by the big three carriers to take money out of your pocket and to circumvent changes to the Wireless Code in 2013 that caps overages to $50. Now to nobody’s surprise, Rogers, Bell and Telus all declined to speak with the CBC on camera about this. You can understand why. All three of them were caught acting in their interests and not in the interest of obeying the law or in the interest of their customers. This is the prime reason why we need real competition in the Canadian wireless space from someone other than Rogers, Telus, or Bell. In the absence of that, we need someone who is stronger than the CRTC to slap these companies silly for stuff like this as they clearly need to be punished for such a cynical move.

For those of you who were following the case of a young man who was killed because he used an app to find his lost cell phone, I have some news for you. The second suspect that was wanted in his death has turned himself in:

Mohamed Ibrahim Sail, 24, was wanted on a Canada-wide arrest warrant and turned himself in shortly before 8 p.m. Friday, London police said on Twitter.

He’ll face trial on a charge of second degree murder. The first suspect who was wanted drowned while trying to escape police. The third suspect has yet to be identified. So I suspect there will be another update to this story soon.

You might remember that a young man in London Ontario was murdered when he went looking for his cell phone and one of the people responsible drowned while running away from police. Now a second person has been named by the cops:

You might remember the story of a man in London Ontario who left his cell phone in a cab and when he tried to retrieve it ended up dead. Well, police quickly zeroed in on a suspect and when they tried to make an arrest, this happened:

The latest 2015 Wall Report [Warning: PDF] which was commissioned by the CRTC and Industry Canada is out. Among other things, the report compares prices in six Canadian cities to those in France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the UK, the US, and Australia. Guess what? Canadian cell phone users pay some of the highest prices on planet Earth. Only the US is more expensive than Canada.

Are you shocked? I’m not shocked. Neither will anyone who pays for cell phone service in Canada.

Another highlight from the report. Those in Saskatchewan pay the least in Canada. Those in BC pay the most. Also, if you want to save 25% to 50% on your bill, you should give Wind Mobile a try.

I wonder how the big three of Rogers, Bell, and Telus justify their rates now?

We’ve all heard stories about people who have had their smartphone stolen and used a service like Find My iPhone to find the location of the people who stole it and then confront them. I’ve always considered this to be risky behavior as you could get really, really hurt or worse by doing this. Sadly, this has proven to be the case in London Ontario where a teenager by the name of Jeremy Ryan Cook lost his smartphone in a cab and he tracked it down using a service like Find My iPhone. Here’s what happened next according to the National Post:

He left his cellphone in a taxi on the weekend. Using a tracking device on the phone, Cook ended up in a parking lot on Highbury Ave. standing outside a 2004 silver Mazda at 5:15 a.m. Sunday.

There were three men inside and they weren’t giving the phone back to Cook, who was there with a relative, police said.

During the confrontation over the phone, one man jumped out of the car and walked away.

The driver stepped on the gas.

And that’s when Cook did what many 18-year-olds might do if someone was stealing their stuff: He tried to stop them.

Cook grabbed on to the driver’s door and held on to the car while it peeled away, out of the parking lot, heading north on Highbury, then turning east into a plaza on the southeast corner of Huron St. and Highbury, police said. Gunshots rang out. When police arrived, Cook was already dead.

Police are now searching for three people in relation to this murder.

I’ll say two things on this topic. Feel free to disagree with me on any or all of these points. I’m good with that.

First, I suggest that you set up your phone so that you can remotely wipe it and lock it so that nobody else can use it. iPhones, BlackBerry phones, and a lot of Android phones have this capability. That way any personal info can be zapped and the phone can be made to be useless. You should also consider backing up your data (including your photos) to your home computer or to a cloud service like iCloud or to one of Google’s cloud based services. That way you can recover from having your smartphone stolen painlessly. Finally if you do have the location of the phone, give the location to the police and let them get it back for you. I get that the phone is expensive, but it’s not worth your life.

Now, that brings me to the police. One of the reasons why the average person takes these sorts of risks to get back their phone is that most police agencies don’t consider smartphone theft to be a high priority. Now if you compare smartphone theft to say murder, I get where they are coming from. But in my mind it is still a crime and given that in this day and age where it is easy to find the stolen smartphone and the evil doers who stole it, I would like to think that the police will act upon that and take one or more bad guys (or girls) off the street. Perhaps police agencies may want to re-evaluate this going forward. Maybe that would prevent another story like this from hitting the news.

Every cell phone carrier says that they’re the best. The best network. The best customer service. Etc. Good thing that J.D. Power did a study on how often Canadian customers suffered service interruptions. The results via The Globe And Mail are interesting:

According to the results, SaskTel earned the highest marks for the best connection in Western Canada, while BCE Inc.’s wireless arm Bell and Telus Corp. were graded as the best in Ontario. (BCE owns 15 per cent of The Globe and Mail.) Customers gave Vidéotron Télécom Ltée top marks in the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, while Rogers was rated worst in both Western and Eastern Canada.

The study ranked the providers on the metric of problems per 100 network connections (PP100) for data, calls and messaging. Overall, data and calls experienced the most problems – 14 and 13 PP100, respectively. Regular messaging was most dependable, with only five PP100.

The findings are based on the responses of 13,000 wireless customers in October-November 2014 and March 2015.

Well, that’s sure to send some execs at Rogers demanding some answers from inside their organization as this is a pretty poor showing from them. However, execs at Bell and Telus will be giving their respective employees high fives. As for SaskTel, maybe they would like to expand elsewhere in Canada?

Expect all three of the big three to be saying something that trumpets how good they are, or in the case of Rogers something that does damage control.

Today has been dubbed “Cellphone Freedom Day” because if you’re a Canadian who has a cell phone and a three year contract that was signed on Or before June 3rd, 2013, you can walk away from that contract without paying any cancellation fees. Now that’s a good thing as it’s going to force Bell, Rogers, and Telus to make deals to either keep you as a customer or steal you from one of the other two. So if you are in this category, this is a good time to get a better deal on your cell phone bill.

That’s where the good news ends. I say that because in the broader sense this will not address the fundamental problem with the cell phone industry in Canada which is that there is an oligopoly that’s made up of Bell, Rogers, and Telus that pretty much kills any meaningful competition. This does nothing to change that. Sure Wind Mobile and some smaller players exist. But they have nowhere near the market share and the network capacity of the so called “big three.” That means that they pose no real threat to the “big three.” As a result, Canadians will continue to pay way more for their cell phones than say the UK or the US or anyone else.

How does this get fixed? There needs to be a fourth wireless carrier that has its own infrastructure (as carriers like Wind have limited infrastructures and their users roam onto one of the networks of the “big three.”) Now that could be Videotron who has bought a ton of spectrum in a lot of places and could theoretically set up a coast to coast wireless network and they already cause some grief for the “big three” in Quebec. But I am not convinced that they’re the salvation for Canada’s wireless problems. Frequent readers of this blog will know that my solution would be to encourage a big overseas carrier such as a Orange, Deutche Telekom, Vodafone or someone of that ilk to come into Canada and set up their own infrastructure. Sure it would take two or three years to do that, but the “big three” would drop their prices overnight to levels that we should be paying simply to keep people from defecting. That’s the real solution. Thus I would enjoy “Cellphone Freedom Day” if you can, but seeing as this is an election year in Canada, I’d also be telling the candidates who knock on your door looking for votes that we need real change in the cell phone industry in Canada and we need that change now.

Score one for the average cell phone carrying Canadian! A court challenge brought against the CRTC by Rogers, Telus, and Bell over the Wireless Code has been dismissed by a Federal Court. Their issue was the final implementation date of the code and the big three claimed that the code amounted to the CRTC retroactively regulating existing contract terms. Here’s what The Globe And Mail had to say:

Justice Denis Pelletier, writing for the unanimous three-member panel, found the code did apply retroactively to contractual rights already entered into before the code came into effect.

However, he found the CRTC’s decision to interpret its governing legislation in such a way that gave it the right to make the code retroactively effective was reasonable.

“It is reasonable to have all customers on the same footing as soon as possible,” Justice Pelletier wrote.

He also noted that it was important to consider the code as a whole and that it also related to the final implementation of other customer protection measures such as plain language in contracts and the provision of critical information.

This will leave wireless carriers scrambling to brace for a June 3 deadline where all three of these carriers will be trying hard to keep existing customers from bolting to each other and to upstart wireless companies like Wind. I will admit that there is always the possibility that they will appeal to the Supreme Court Of Canada. But in the here and now it’s a big win for consumers as it forces the big three to do something they’ve never had to do before: Compete for customers.