Quebec, along with Saskatchewan and Manitoba were seen to be immune from recent Canada-wide wireless price increases—until now that is! Bell and Virgin Mobile have increased wireless prices by $5 per month in Quebec, reports MobileSyrup.
Internal documents note changes are effective today, and applies to all Bell Mobility Share Plans, while BYOD (bring your own device) increases $10 per month, just like other provinces. Also, the $50 non-share plan with 2GB will be eliminated.
Virgin Mobile customers will see all Silver, Gold and Platinum plans jump by $5 per month for new users, while a couple new plans with 50MB (not a typo) will be launched for light data users (i.e. people who check weather only?).
(insert witty #BellLetsTalk joke related to wireless increases here)
SaskTel Raises Prices by $5 Per Month
The Big 3 can’t have all the fun, right? SaskTel has similarly increased their prices, with all Voice and Data plans going up by $5 per month. Despite the increases, Saskatchewanians (?) enjoy some amazing wireless plans outsiders can’t get, such as $105 per month for unlimited Canada-wide voice and data.
Videotron Lowers Data Allotments in Response to Big 3
Quebec’s Videotron decided to lower data buckets for a couple of their premium plans and BYOD plans, instead of increasing prices. The changes are below:
Rogers CEO Guy Laurence justified recent wireless hikes by saying yesterday “If you think about how much work it takes to build, run and upgrade a national mobile network, trust me it’s a lot more work than making a cup of coffee.”
[via MobileSyrup]
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Hey Gary, wasn’t the Rogers’ CEO statement revised to be for landline?
Anyway, it was just a mater of time before the others raised their prices. Why should all the money go to the Robelus? Sasktel, MTS, Videotron, etc might as well grab some extra margin. If we all raise our prices, then the consumer has no choice but to pay.
The reduction in data has got to suck for the new subscribers.
I wish one of the telco’s would introduce a rollover of unused data to the next month. I’d like to see a rolling 3 month rollover, the best would be like T-Mobiles 12 month plan, but even if it was just a month it could be something for the consumer. I can’t imagine that the marginal cost of rolling over data would be that much. But then again, the telco’s would lose out on all those overage charges, so there is no way this would ever happen.
Guy Laurence is on record saying “overages is how we pay the bills”
The Canadian dollar is expected to recover throughout the year, I wonder if they will reduce the prices. ???? I doubt jt really
I bet they’re already preparing a justification for why they will not be able to rollback the “non-substantial” increase in prices, as we talk.
It’s not expected to recover anytime soon… In fact most Analyst predict the Canadian dollar to be below 0.60$ US by the end of 2016
That was the old predictions, I happen to study abd follow the new forecasts everyday, and considering the recent turnaround in oil price, and the upcoming deals for iran and saudi arabia to cut production, it will recover much sooner than it was first expected.
They all work together as one big corporation. We all know that. No surprises at the increases or the lies.