Rogers-owned Fido has updated its wireless plans page today with some major changes for news owners.
Specifically, the ability to tether your mobile data plan is no longer free, but it’s now a paid add-on. Yes, that’s right, you need to pay for tethering your mobile plan, at the price of $5 per month. So for new customers looking to tether their mobile data to use on their laptop or tablet for example, you’ll now need to pay for that option.
While “hotspot available as an add-on” is new, also new are 500 and 1000 international texts added to the 60GB and 80GB plans, along with 3% cash back when paying with a Rogers Red credit card.
After checking the plans pages of Koodo and Virgin Plus, they are still offering free mobile hotspots.
Here are Fido’s current plans:
Here are plans from Virgin Plus:
Virgin Plus has removed the $44/60GB plan.
Here are Koodo’s plans as of today:
Why the fee increase? Telcos are dealing with huge amounts of debt, and in Rogers’ case, they recently inked a massive renewed NHL rights deal to the tune of $11 billion. Someone has to pay for that, right?
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lol, they’re just making the 2nd tiered brands look like worse value.
Eventually, their flanker brands in Canada might disappear or end up as strictly pay as you go, similar to Lucky Mobile.
All the 2nd tiered brands may follow?
If Koodo follows suit I’m done with them. I had 4 days of internet outages this past week with Sasktel due to a wireless router/modem failure. So I had to rely on mobile hotspot. I’m going back to Public or try a new carrier, Lum Mobile.
It only applies to new signups with new plans. Also Public does not even support some basic features like wifi calling. Which is especially important as Telus tends to have such terrible indoor reception.
It might be elsewhere in the country but I haven’t had any issues with any of the Telus brands in SK because they use the same towers as SaskTel.
Nice glad to hear that. In BC Telus/Bell tends to have the highest max speeds outdoors compared to Rogers, but once you go indoors the signal drops off a cliff and Rogers is much better. They don’t have a lot of low band spectrum here, it seems.
If that is your experience that means indoors DAS , Small Cells, or repeaters are installed that retain the signal. It's impossible to have a better signal indoors and a worse outdoor signal otherwise. Full stop.
No sorry that’s not accurate. Rogers uses more lower band spectrum in BC than Telus. The lower frequencies penetrate objects (namely buildings) far better. Why do you think 2.4Ghz wifi penetrates obstacles better than 5Ghz?
Public Mobile will probably next to be hit.
Rogers would only do this if they knew or were certain the others will do the same. I’m not saying they explicitly and illegally colluded to raise prices for customers but I’m not saying they didn’t.
They always do. You've been around long enough to know that unless you had a lobotomy.
Charging customers extra for the data they're already paying for!
That's the Canadian teleco (and Trump) way.
Trump has nothing to do with this. Our telecoms have always been greedy and have been granted full protection from the government to continue with their oligopoly.
Very similar actually. Both are grifters who exploit others for their own financial gain (Trump university? Trump foundation? Trump coin? Etc). Trump’s cronies in the Supreme Court also gave him full protection (complete immunity) from government prosecution.
#tds
Found the guy with orange all over his chin.
Just letting those Cheeto balls slap you in the face then thanking him when he’s done.
Pathetic.
Why do you have orange on your chin?
What's the point of granting large data plans if you can't even use it the way you want to?
how to alienate your customers, more for freedom and their better deals. fido/rogers def has better signal but im sure they took a big hit when freedom joined the roster. hope nobody follows them, im still waiting for visual voice mail to be free like in the usa. i thought it would change when ios added it kinda to their software.
I highly doubt any Telco will give you free visual vm, retention may be able to offer it.
In most countries outside of Canada all the carriers do. It’s a uniquely sick Canadian grift that they charge for it here.
Name them. Regular voicemail, yes. Visual voicemail? No. In most countries people don't talk on the mobile, they text or use WhatsApp.
United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, Singapore… seriously. Look it up.
I would argue that Rogers does not have a better signal in many areas that Freedom has coverage. In my experience they are equal and BC Telus is remarkably superior.
How would they even know if I'm tethering?
It can be detected at the network packet level, and it's technically feasible for the provider to turn on/off the filter that lets these packets through.
That's probably the dumbest question anyone in Canada has asked this year. And true to typical iPhone-in-Canada brainrot, a bunch of people dimwits liked it.
Nope it's a valid question. Technically you should be able to use VPN and the ISP shouldn't know where the traffic is coming from since your iPhone acts like a gateway or firewall. You're the idiot here Rachel.
also even right now if I tethered my laptop to my phone through Rogers mobile data, technically the data coming out of the iPhone isn't tagged as to what device it's coming from.
The carrier profile that the network sends to the phone will disable the personal hotspot option in the phone's settings. It's not a matter of detecting or tagging it, your phone will simply prevent you from tethering while connected to their network.
Canadian carriers are pathetic in their insatiable greed. They no longer know what tricks to pull or what else to come up with to keep ripping off consumers.
What the hell… Seriously ? Shame on Canadian carriers always finds a way to loot money from customers.
You assume they have feelings—they don't.
Eventually Robelus will start doing the same with their premium brands. Flanker brands will probably have to start charge extra for VoLTE, Wi-Fi Calling, SMS, etc. According to the CCTS and CRTC, taking a feature or service away that was already included in the price is perfectly legal. In their eyes, they'd probably argue it's ethica too.
I have no idea how they could even know that you are running a mobile hotspot. It seems more like a "opt in" charge.
Does anyone know how they could know? Something (a feature?) carriers requested when Android/iOS was just starting out to call home?
OMG. I had no idea the readers to this site were so dumb. Actually I did. I just assume people will get smarter.
This is the most ridiculous thing they've done. Soon there will be a new company and they will take over all your plans. They are abusive! We are already paying for our data! We can use it however we want!
No, the most ridiculous thing they’ve done is that they even have activation fees let alone how much they have increased them lately. This move is also stupid though, yes.
the activation fee isn't that ridiculous since it's well documented as a major money grab.
Your comment is the second most ridiculous one I came across this year on this site.
Glad I am no longer with Fido.
I am so 'glad' you don't realize the telecos all mirror each other.
Oh yes, mobile plans are not regressing/devolving.
I am not amused
Tailscale + Unbound full recursive DNS should take care of that… Or OpenWrt router Gli net , raspberry Pi. Or can Probably find a rooted app or mod.
This doesn't make any sense. The hotspot is a function of the phone so how can the carrier stop it?
It is my understanding that, tje problem are not these big corporations abusing us, the problem are the government's branches responsible to protect us who Infact fail to do so, notably the CRTC. The big corporations have no integrity or honor, they will always fill their pockets at our expense, it's the government who needs to step in, protect us and regulate. Same goes for food prices. Instead of trying to convince the big fish to lower their prices, as a government you should say, that's it, from now on, this is how much you can markup and you can charge for butter, bread, eggs etc. Put it this way, if there were no speed limits or the speed limits were there but were not enforced, would most drivers, abide to that speed limit? No they wouldn't.
Accuse me to be a socialist but these corporations and governments are jerking us around in the name of "free market" and democracy.