The number rule of Fight Club is—you don’t talk about Fight Club (I’m repeating myself). This was the case with Telus’ flanker brand Koodo and their regional $48/5GB plan exclusive to Manitoba, which offered unlimited nationwide calling and text messages. The discounted plan is alive because of local competition from carrier MTS.
While residents in the province could easily obtain this plan, a loophole allowed anyone to acquire it through the ‘wireless black market’ via Craigslist or Kijiji, or doing it yourself. All you had to do was visit a Koodo kiosk, activate a new number, then go home and use self-serve to change to the Manitoba promo plan yourself at home, then port over your existing number.
Telus warned users of the risks of obtaining a plan not available in their home province, but people took the risk and did so anyways. But it looks like the party is over—as Telus has since closed the loophole to allow Koodo users to switch to the plan online, a change made in the past couple weeks.
For example, this Howard Forums thread has nearly 450 pages and over 6,600 posts of discussion on “creative” ways to obtain the regional $48 Manitoba plan, but users there have confirmed the loophole no longer works. Users now looking to make the switch to the $48/5GB plan will need to visit a Koodo kiosk and get employees to make the change.
Even with the plan recently changing its data overages to $5/100MB from $10/1GB (a 500% increase for the cost of 1GB of data overages), users still went ahead to get the plan.
Anyways, the timing of the loophole shutdown most likely funnelled users towards the Public Mobile $38/4GB promo, which expires today.
Anyone out there using this Manitoba plan—outside of the province (don’t answer this)?
