It is November 5, 2009 and the day that Telus customers have been waiting for has arrived. The Telus iPhone has officially launched in Canada! Head down to your local Telus or Apple Store for all the launch day awesomeness.
If you want to ensure you get an iPhone 3GS, book an appointment online at Apple.ca for a guaranteed iPhone at your local Apple Store. For step by step reservation instructions, see here.
Below are links for information regarding the Telus HSPA+ network and the iPhone plans, which were reported first exclusively by iPhoneinCanada.ca. See the links below:
Telus to launch the iPhone in Canada announcement
Telus Network developments for Saskatchewan
Telus Confirms November 5 iPhone launch date
Are you an existing Telus customer that has upgraded to the iPhone, or are you switching over from one of the other carriers?
Update (11/05/09-09:50am PST):
Front of the Telus Store. Store opens at 10AM. No iPhone signage. Nada. By comparison, Rogers stores opened last year 1-2 hours early.
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Wow, the plan look much better than Bell. At least I get long distance for 65$ with included voice mail
I wonder if it's visual voicemail it doesn't say, half the links say page not found. Def a lot better than Bell's plans though by a long shot.
I just got mine!! FINALLY!
although it's lame how they don't give you any discounts or free stuff for renewing.. even though I've waited for so long and been with telus for so long..
oh well.. I'm finally like the rest of you!
GO GO GO! Telus user's!!!!!!!
Just waited out for one. Telus offers current customers no ability to upgrade without paying full device price. It's cheaper for me to buy out of my contract and switch to Bell or Rogers, and the girl actually told me to do that. Talk about great customer service.
I'm just under 2 years called Telus since myself and my 2nd line are and they gave me the $65 with free call display and unlimited txt, so $65 total yay! I love telus!
Now that all the plans are out, has anyone done a proper comparison of Bell, Vs. Telus, Vs. Rogers' iPhone plans? From what I read here, Telus is generally better than Bell, but I'm curious how Rogers fits in. I am just about at the point where I can upgrade my blackberry, and I am trying to decide between an iPhone or Bold with Rogers, or paying the cancelation and getting either an iPhone or a Hero with either of the other two companies.
You have 2 years left? did you pay full price for the phone?
I went into telus today at 930 and was told that their “activation system for iphone only” was down SYSTEMWIDE, so i was unable to get the phone. they took my number and said they'd call me when its up, what i do not understand is how the person that posted above got one…..not impressed.
So.. I called telus after I got the iphone.. and complained that they didn't give me anything for renewing.. and they said they'd give me 50% my first 3 months.. so that's pretty good..
iphone 4 LYFE!
Congrats! Welcome to the world of iPhone!
damn network! I can only get text messages from telus phones.. or facebook… 🙁
the plans are too poor – I was going to be upgrading but I will not be now. I will wait for Wind/Dave to bring some price competition to Canada.
Both Bell and Telus have the same crappy plans as Fido/Rogers. It would cost me at least $100 a month to approach a plan I pay $62 for with now. Sadly, no iphone for me. Not sure why people get them at those prices.
How much data do most people use? I would think more than 2 GB a month so that would make their plans even more expensive. Is wind really coming to Canada and I would not expect any better plans than the bad ones we have.
I'd be curious to know also…sounds like the Telus plan is pretty good, but is it enough for me to pay Rogers stupid ETF?
Dan the issue is with Rogers, ongoing issue since 11/3 that they can't send text back to Telus. Rogers knows of the issue and doesn't have an ETR.
Does anyone know if Telus has “Pay as You Go” type of plan, on their GSM network? I was thinking of just buying a SIM and trying out the network. I asked a Bell rep about this, and they said I had to purchase a device, to go on their Pay as You Go plan.
Yes there will be a prepaid option for the Telus HSPA network. No pricing yet and you will need an unlocked HSPA-ready phone. There might be phone bundles coming out but no news yet. That's actually what I'm going to do as I'm a Fido client that works for Telus.
Has anybody tested their speed on the new network yet? (speedtest app via the app store)
Very interested in finding how HSPA data is like across Canada.
Considering the lowest iPhone plan is $50 and at the bottom, it says you can add unlimited texting and Caller ID for $15, I wouldn't say you got those two features for free @ $65.
You need to have called in, I got so much stuff, if I wanted to renew it was $200 discount but chose not to, and I also got the $15 fun bundle for free so just $65 plus evenings at 6 for free as well. You have to call loyalty and ask.
I just ran the speed test.. Download: 2169 Kbps Upload: 279 Kpbs
This issue has been resolved as of this
morning.
I'm still seeing reports come in, but they seem to be residual.
Just got mine at 9:30 this morning! :oD So it's weird for Dan that they told ya their ENTIRE system was down…I'm in ottawa and I got in the store at 9:30 and came out with my iPhone at 10:10!
So far so good! I have to agree that the Loyalty people are the way to go! I re-signed for 3 years ( I had 1 year left on my contract) and they renewed my entire features (except for unlimited data) for less than I was paying before! :o)
So definitely call the loyalty program if you want something good!
Oh and btw… The iPhone rocks! ;o) hehe
Getting mine later today after classes, hopefully they will have some left. Grats to those who got theirs and hope you enjoy it!
Is visual voicemail not added on by default? On their site under smartphones (but not iPhone) it says visual voicemail $7.50 which seems really high for it. I don't have any voicemail waiting I don't think but when I click voicemail it just said calling voicemail…. I don't really care about visual voicemail but not sure if I'm missing something here.
I didn't say I have 2 years left I said I'm AT 2 years on my contract, say what you want my plan is the $65 one (The one with 1gb of data) for myself and my partners phone both on my account and they gave me the $15 fun bundle free and evenings from 6 free.
On WiFi just got 4428 kbps using Cisco Speed test, and on 3G only 662 which is odd. In safari websites on 3G or Wifi load at the same speed, soooo fast.
Just tethered to my thinkpad and used speedtest.net got 700kbps this time.
Got it this morning.
Still had 10 months left on current contract, so initially they only wanted to give me $150 off (they said for 6 mons remaining or less they honour the special 199/299 pricing).
After a fair amount of talking to customer service and loyalty reps while in the store I managed to get $200 off + they gave me 5pm evenings and caller ID (which I needed anyway and adds up to more than the value of the remaining $300 difference with the promotion price for the phone).
I waited for an hour for a telus rep to tell me that their system was down. (12:15) They did say that they would have it all set up by 5:00 pm…
And what's with the $25 fee for a new handset renewal? Anyone pay this?
I'm still waiting for my phone – supposed to be done by the end of the day. I talked with Telus Sales regarding Visual Voicemail and all the guy could tell me about was Telus' “Voicemail to text” which they call visual voicemail. I'm not sure if on the iPhone the voicemail key functions the same as it does on Rogers. Anyone know?
How many months were left on your contract?
i think telus and bell's commercial style match iPhone more (white background, simple) ^^
So with a year left on your contract you got it for $300? Or did you get a discount off full device price?
has anyone jailbroken their telus iphone yet?
would like to know if telus put up any annoying safeguards on the iphone
Toronto Eaton Centre's Telus store ended up really busy at like 11pm for the iPhone 3gs today. Didn't buy one though cause I'm on fido. =(
Lol i totally called it . so many of my friends had high hopes for Telus. I told them not to hold their breathe. No deals will be comming out of Telus. They will follow suite with all the other carriers, or charge MORE due to the new network, and label it as “Premium” lol i have heard a lot of complaints on many forums so far lol
just wait for the network hiccups too. They just got HSPA days – weeks ago , probably still working it out. that was the 2nd part of my prediction.
Btw Congrats to all those who managed to score a good Telus plan, hopfully you didnt have to put to much to get your iphone, But congrats non the less
Question…will a unlocked iphone work on the telus network?
Yes
Visual Voicemail is currently NOT supported with Telus. Just regular old Voicemail, that's why it calls voicemail instead of showing the interface. There is NO option to add Visual Voicemail for any price at this time, although the rep said it was coming “sometime”…
Texting services have been down since I signed up and still aren't fixed. When I call customer service for technical support I'm told that nobody is available and get disconnected.
me too! Exact same issue . I cannot receive Texts or Phonecallshdca19
For me the issue is that I can't receive text messages from Rogers phones. Somebody said earlier that the issue was resolved yesterday, but I am still experiencing the same problem. I have received texts from telus numbers, but I can confirm that the rogers text dont come through.
Anyone know anything about that?
Thanks!
I got the 16GB so I paid 199$ but yes with just over a year left (one year and one month) :o)
Quick update- when I did pick up my phone yesterday they had it all ready to go for me. The nice girl there even let me keep my free caller ID that I had gotten with my retention plan. So I got the $50 plan and no charge for the caller ID. I wasn't expecting any discounts because the plan was completely different, so that was a nice suprise.
Even though it wasn't ready for me right away, I was very satisifed with the service from the location.
Nice! Sounds like Telus definitely has some good employees that actually try
to make customers happy. It's quite the rarity nowadays!
Ya, I work for Telus at an independent dealer. We had a dealer rally on the 4th, and we got talking about the release, and I actually said “I give the system until 10:30am before it dies”. So fast forward to the 5th, and it's 10:30am. The system is starting to get slow, some pages are half-loading or it just times out. And by 11:00am I couldn't even log into our partners site. I couldn't even tell the people who walked in the door, what discounts they could get on a new phone.
The 6th was almost as bad, around 10:30 the site basically told me to go take an early lunch, and by around 1:30 people's accounts were accessible, and the activations were only taking around 20min. But the ones I did in the morning all had errors on their system side. Not just activations mind you. Anything having to do with switching customers phones to new hardware. Some services just error'd out and didn't work.
All I have to say, is make sure you get your day planned to hang around the store, or be prepared to not have a phone for a day. Overall though, the launch was good. Lots of people got new phones, iphones and such. It took me 4 hours to get my own phone running.
I went and picked up my iphone on Friday…..STILL waiting for it to be activated!! *sigh* As of today, it is finally showing on my account page, but still is not working. I am getting frustrated!