This Wednesday, June 3, marks the end of 3-year cellphone contracts in Canada, as mandated by the CRTC Wireless Code of Conduct, also pegged as “Cell Phone Freedom Day” by Open Media.
Ahead of this date, which will allow customers two years into their three year contracts to walk away without paying cancellation or hardware subsidy fees, Fido, Virgin Mobile and Koodo have all coincidentally ended their $45/1GB BYOD promo.
The price has now increased by $8 to $53 per month, as you can see below:
According to the consumer groups such as the PIAC, consumers now ‘have the power’ over the Big 3 and should exercise their freedom to research competitors for ‘deals’.
If you’re going to be part of the ‘double cohort’ this Wednesday, refer to this article to get some answers on how the end of 3-year contracts may affect you. Will we see better plans arrive on Wednesday? Possibly, but we’ll have to wait and see.
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I don’t expect there to be any “deals”. The preservation of the oligopoly is more important to the Big 3 than any potential gains from a low ball play to gain subscribers from the double cohort.
There’s no deal for “new” consumers. Price is going to increase. As for existing customers with current carriers like myself, it is more important that the carrier is keeping its grandfathered plans for us.
They all simultaneously end their promo plans as thousands of new customers become eligible. That’s exactly what a company interested in acquiring new customers would do. No oligopoly collusion here.
They’ve been colluding on prices for years just as the banks do. Canada is rife with anti-competitive behaviour when it comes to consumers.
Still the same prices in Québec for some reason, 43$/1GB & 53$/2GB.
Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan always get lower prices than the rest of Canada
There should be an auditor for the mobile industry in this country or something to that affect. Rules that prevent another company from immediately raising its prices to match a raise by another competitor (for a nearly identical plan) should be in place. Create a three or four day hold. This would make price increases less frequent because a company would have to figure in their competitive disadvantage before the other carriers predictably follow in lock step.
What utter BS!