Bell Mobile TV Will Charge Standard Rates Starting April 29, Due to CRTC Ruling

Back in January, the CRTC ruled in favour of net neutrality, ordering Bell and Videotron to end their unlawful practices of favouring their own content when subsidizing mobile data for TV apps. Yesterday, Bell updated its Mobile TV support page to reflect the decision that it will need to comply starting April 29.

Bell mobiletv

You may recall that Benjamin Klass filed a complaint against Bell and Videotron back in December 2013, revealing that mobile data used for Bell’s Mobile TV and Videotron’s TV app didn’t count against customer data buckets, while — for example — watching videos on YouTube did. This was deemed unlawful by the CRTC in a ruling handed down on January 29, and appealed by Bell.

As of yesterday, Bell has updated its support page with a paragraph and a Q&A explaining the changes its customers will notice as a result of the CRTC ruling. In terms of money, Bell customers will be allowed to stream five hours of content for $5 a month, but every additional hour of content streamed using WiFi will be charged at $3 an hour.

The CRTC has ruled on January 29, 2015 that Bell is no longer allowed to offer Mobile TV viewing without impact to the data included in your plan. As a result of the ruling, you may notice a change to your bill with the change to Mobile TV. Effective April 29, 2015 you will still continue to have access to over 40 live and on demand channels, however data used for viewing on our mobile network will be rated using standard rates (from data included in your plan or add-on, or at pay per-use data rates, as applicable). 5 hours of Wi-Fi viewing per month is included (additional viewing over Wi-Fi is $3/hour).

Customers using their mobile data plans will get text notifications after using 90% of the data allocated in their plans and after accumulating $50 of data overage.

Update: As for usage over Wi-Fi, as stated on Bell’s page 20 minutes of video will use approximately 120 MB of data. In other words, 6 MB for every minute of video watched.

P.S. - Like our news? Support the site with a coffee/beer. Or shop with our Amazon link. We use affiliate links when possible--thank you for supporting independent media.