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Get ready to pay for incoming text messages

Companies to bring in 15-cent levy on incoming text messages


Sarah Schmidt , Canwest News Service

Published: Tuesday, July 08, 2008
OTTAWA - Cellphone users are about to be hit with new fees as two of Canada's telecommunications giants plan to bring in a levy on incoming text messages.
Bell Mobility will begin charging customers 15 cents per incoming text message on Aug. 8. Telus Mobility is moving to the same billing practice effective Aug. 24. Until now, their pay-per-use customers who send text messages have been charged a 15-cent fee per message, but it hasn't cost anything to receive them.
The pending new charge has sparked outrage on blogs, with customers saying they can't control who sends them messages, especially when spammers obtain their cell number or retailers send them unsolicited messages.
"This charge is unbelievable. If someone sends me "spam" on my Bell phone, I have to pay for it? I made the mistake of giving my cellphone number to a car rental agency and now I get spam text messages," a Bell customer ranted on a Canadian technology blog.
"I actually work for Bell and I think this incoming text messages being charged is bogus!" posted another.
Text messaging has ballooned in popularity since inter-carrier service came to Canada in 2002.
In its first year, there were 369,000 text messages sent every day, or 11 million annually. Today, Canadians send 45.4 million per day, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. And cellphone subscribers sent 4.1 billion in the first quarter of this year, close to the annual total of 4.3 billion sent in 2006 and on track to surpass the 10.1 billion sent last year.
Association spokesman Marc Choma said the phenomenon has moved beyond the teenage crowd - known as the "early adopters" - to parents, who use it as a "family management tool."
Telus Mobility spokesperson AJ Gratton cites this rapid growth as the reason for the new charge.
"The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal," Gratton said. "This volume places tremendous demands on our network and we can't afford to provide this service for free anymore."
Characterizing the annual growth in text traffic on Bell's wireless network as "massive," company spokesman Jason Laszlo said the result has been greater capacity, licensing and support costs.
He said all but one of Bell's North American competitors charge for both incoming and outcoming text messages.
Bell and Telus customers can avoid the charge by switching to Rogers, which says it has no plans to institute a fee to receive a text message. But Bell and Telus both charge penalties if customers break their contracts, at $20 for every month remaining on a broken contract up to $400.
"We just don't charge for it, and have no plans to. Now it's a unique differentiator for Rogers," company spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton said of the move to charge for incoming messages.
Howard Chui, based in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill, runs an online forum about the mobile phone industry in Canada. He isn't optimistic that consumers are going to win this fight. And he's not sure how long Rogers will hold out.
"I think overall customers will just have to take it," he said, characterizing the three Canadian carriers as an "oligopoly."
Rogers is dealing with its own customer backlash over its rate plans for the Apple iPhone, on store shelves on Friday. The company, which has an exclusive iPhone carrier arrangement with Apple Inc. in Canada, is offering monthly plans ranging from $60 to $155.
The proposed fee schedule has unleashed an online campaign against Rogers, under the tagline "Screwing Canadian iPhone customers since '08."
Canadians already pay more than Europeans and Americans for cellphone services. Industry Minister Jim Prentice acknowledged this fact in the spring when he opened Canada's wireless spectrum auction.
Industry Canada set aside 40 megahertz, out of a total 105, for smaller companies to compete against the established telecommunications giants. Prentice said "the intent behind the auction is lower prices, more choice for consumers.'"
© Canwest News Service 2008
Click to expand...

This is kind of outrageous. The cost of sending a text message should already include the cost for the receiving of the message. That means you could be charged from spam or someone incorrectly putting in a number.

Rogers already screwed us over for iPhone, and now Telus and Bell do this. More proof our mobile networks are messssed up.
 
I think this is how it is in the US by default, too. That we've avoided being charged for incoming SMS messages for so long is just one of the weird quirks of the Canadian mobile industry, I guess.

This pretty well sucks, especially since the "we need to raise costs because of increasing SMS usage" line is most definitely BS. Odds are, with both companies offering unlimited data plans, they cooked this up to make sure their SMS revenue didn't decline as people with SmartPhones start texting their friends using e-mail or web apps.

Pretty sneaky. And I guess they assumed this was the best time to announce since everyone's already busy being mad at one of our mobile carriers.

Long-term, though, SMS is kind of a bastard technology that can't be long for this world. At the rate we're going, every handset will have email or IM (What we in Canada call 'MSN') with fairly generous data limits in less than 5 years. Why bother with SMS when you have that?
 
It is very very pathetic that this is happening. I'm glad I don't work in Bell Mobility customer service anymore.
 
I can't believe this! Canada has the worst phone plans in the world! We need more competition in here...
 
This isn't new. I used to have a Fido plan that charged 10 cents per incoming text, and I ended up cancelling my phone over it because I got sick of paying $5-6 a month for spam. The real piss off was that they wouldn't disable the SMS service on my phone when I asked (I never used it anyways), so I gave up and just got rid of it altogether
 
urbandreamer said:
Better yet: don't use a cell phone!
Click to expand...
I was going to say that. I have a pay as you go phone, put $100 on it each January ($100 or more won't expire for 12 months), and rarely use it. When I go for walks in Cabbagetown or with the dog to the park I take my Motorola walkie-talkie and if my wife needs to speak with me she just calls me on that, up to a range of about 5 km. It worked great at the Cabbagetown festival for example, since we could split up and find each other later on without cell phones.
 
I'm switching to Rogers soon. Bell may squeeze a few extra dollars out of me before my contract ends, but it will cause them to lose a $50 per month contract when I switch to a competitor. I have had issues with literally every Bell service that I have ever subscribed to. Rogers may not be perfect, but their customer service is stellar, and open longer than 8 hours per day.
 
"Rogers [...] customer service is stellar"

Respectfully disagree.


But that is internet service.
 
Chuck said:
I'm switching to Rogers soon. Bell may squeeze a few extra dollars out of me before my contract ends, but it will cause them to lose a $50 per month contract when I switch to a competitor. I have had issues with literally every Bell service that I have ever subscribed to. Rogers may not be perfect, but their customer service is stellar, and open longer than 8 hours per day.
Click to expand...

LOL. Rogers. Customer service. Stellar. All in the same line! Hilarious!
 
I've been with 3 US providers: T-Mobile, Verizon, and now Sprint. They all charge for incoming texts (or took away from your allowance if you purchse 300 or 1000 texts per month) if you didn't have a plan with unlimited texting.

Is this a Canadian thing where they didn't charge for incoming texts?
 
You're not seeing things, I do think that Rogers customer service is stellar. For starters, I've never called Rogers and not been able to talk to someone because the call centre was closed. Bell shuts down at 8 pm, and is also closed on Sundays I think. The wait is usually 5 minutes or less, and very often I'll be connected to someone right away. Before even talking to someone, Rogers already wins!

The customer service reps themselves are always helpful in my experience. They are knowledgeable enough to answer my questions themselves, and rarely have to put me on hold to find an answer. Whenever I have had issues with billing, they've always credited me for whatever I have disputed. I've never hung up without my concern being addressed, and have not once had to talk to a manager.

Most importantly, the service reps listen. When I called Bell asking them to cancel text messaging capabilities, I told them that I seldom use text messaging, have no plans to increase my usage in the future, and don't feel that it is an important feature for me. Immediately after, they suggested that I consider (for a fee) adding unlimited text messaging to my plan. Um, okay....

Like all of you, I have many bad things to say about the actual services provided by Rogers. Cable is over priced and there are nowhere near enough HD channels. Home phone is expensive, and don't get me started on internet. However, when it comes to customer service, Rogers can't be beat, and that's why I ultimately use Rogers for everything.
 
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