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Rogers/Fido Reduce More Local Calling Areas
Rogers/Fido have just finished another round of reducing customer local calling areas. We originally reported about this back in August when the following cities were undergoing the change:
- Sarnia (Ontario) – July 1, 2009
- Windsor, London and Kingston (Ontario) – August 1, 2009
- Kelowna, Nanaimo and Victoria (British Columbia) – September 15, 2009
- Toronto (Ontario) – October 15, 2009
Well, Rogers has not only added MORE cities, but this just got personal for Vancouverites. Rogers/Fido, you now earn yourselves the royal NUMBER 19 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18).
Completing by December 15, 2009, Rogers Wireless and Fido have and will be reducing the local calling areas for the following cities (dates included):
- Calgary, Edmonton (Alberta) – November 1, 2009
- Guelph, Hespeler-Cambridge, St.Catharines, Kitchener, Hamilton, Stratford (Ontario) – November 15, 2009
- Vancouver (British Columbia) – December 1, 2009
- Montreal, Quebec City, Trois-Rivi̬res, Sherbrooke (Quebec) РDecember 15, 2009
What does this mean?
Local Calling Areas (LCA) are invisible geographic boundaries that determine which calls are billed as local calls and which calls are billed as long distance calls. Your LCA is the geographic area in which you can make or receive phone calls without incurring long distance charges. In other words, they are billed as local calls.
For the areas listed above, your LCA has been or will be reduced. What is Rogers/Fido reason for the change? Get ready for this one (emphasis added by yours truly):
The local calling area for the cities above will be changing effective the dates above to align with standard boundaries across the industry. These changes will provide you with clear boundaries of our local calling areas and may make your bill easier to understand.
Two things to take away from that. First, if Rogers/Fido are aligning their policy with standard boundaries across the industry, why wait until now to make the change?
And second, “may make your bill easier to understand“? The only thing that will be easier to understand is that your bill may be increased.
These changes, reducing your LCA, reduce the size of the area in which local calls are free. Now, depending on where you are, your once “local call†may very well be billed at a long distance rate. Translation: Higher Monthly Bill.
Also to note, the LCA is not a part of the contractual agreement that customers may have signed, so these changes are technically “allowed”.
Examples
The examples below are based off the assumption that you live in Vancouver and you have a Vancouver number (but you can substitute any city):
Outgoing Calls
1.) If you are inside your LCA and make a call to a number outside your LCA, you pay long distance (you are in Vancouver and you are calling Toronto).
2.) If you are outside your LCA and make a call to a number that is inside the calling area that you are currently in, you no pay long distance as this is consider a local call (you are currently in Toronto and are calling someone in Toronto).
Incoming Calls
1.) If you are inside your LCA and receive a phone call, you pay no long distance as this is consider a local call (you are in Vancouver and you are receiving a call from Toronto or Montreal or Halifax, etc).
2.) If you are outside your LCA and receive a phone call, you pay long distance (you are in Toronto and receive a call from Toronto or Montreal or Halifax, etc).
Call Forwarding
1.) If you are forwarding a call from your Rogers phone to a local number within your LCA, you pay no long distance as this is consider a local call (you are in Vancouver or another city and you are forwarding your calls to your home in Vancouver).
2.) If you are forwarding a call from your Rogers phone to a number outside of your LCA, you pay long distance (you are in Vancouver or another city and you are forwarding your calls to your friends house in Toronto).
Maps detailing specifics are available from Rogers and Fido.
Below are the details for the Vancouver, BC change:
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Does robbers wireless really believe the bullshit they spew?
“may make your bill easier to understand” — nice… and robbers wireless MAY care about customer experience. The CRTC needs to do their job and put a leash on this company. If they're going to deny foreign competition, they better regulate the domestic ones.
Well, even calling home is a long distance for me… it can't really get worse than that!
To any phone company reading this post . . . here is how to corner the mobile market in Canada:
One price for everything. Let me call anyone (say within Canada), text, email, surf, tether, etc. as much as I want, whenever I want. I will pay a flat fee for this You name it and lots of people will flock to your service.
here are the new maps for fido:
http://www.fido.ca/web/Fido.portal?_nfpb=true&_…
“align with standard boundaries across the industry”?
TRANSLATION: “The other guys are getting away with it, so we want as well.”
I want to speak to someone about this. Is there not someone in the canadian government that has to approve these types of things? This is robbery and rogers CONSISTENTLY creates new rules to trick their customers into paying more without knowing. The rules of which only ever found in fine print that can be found only in a small corner of the internet.
The fact that they have ATTEMPTED to create a way to keep us informed with out usage but it is STILL broken after MONTHS….MONTHS…. is atrocious I feel like they just have that service in place to say they have it but it just doesn't work right now and they are working on it.
Seriously, who in parliament monitors this?
#18 now eh, yikes! lol
Anyone wanna put down some bets for the # Rogers will be at before 2010 😛 lol
At the moment, that would be me.
🙂
As much as I like to complain as the next guy, I just took at look at the Fido pages for my area it does not look any different from landline calling areas. Were the offering larger local areas before?
It's not going to end anytime soon folks. When will the madness end? Rogers Wireless is the WORST COMPANY EVER!
Read the fine print on their website. It's going to continue into 2010. Shrinking local calling areas charging fees for incoming texts. We are signing 3 yes 3 year contracts that mean nothing to Rogers. How can we be penalized or terminating a contract if Rogers keeps rasimg fees? Who's watching out for consumers? This needs to stop! It won't and the CRTC will crush ant real competition because the big 3 have them bought and paid for. Happy holidays everyone. This Rogers robbery will continue throught the years and years to come.
Seems like Robbers is accelerating their program to stick it to customers since Ted Rogers passed away…..
Guess who runs the CRTC?
Former executives of Rogers, Bell, Telus.
So don't expect any changes for the better for the consumer.
We need a government that will shut down the CRTC. It's a waste of $ and completely unnecessary!
The URL in the post above linking to detailed maps for Rogers is incomplete. It should be:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-plan…
What I'm wondering is, are the maps currently available pre or post changes to the LCA size? I've downloaded the Montreal one now and I'll do so again after the 15th to check if it's changed.
Okay, finally got around to downloading the replacement Montreal map and it's currently 404 – anyone else found the same? I've emailed Rogers for their explanation for the absence of the map.
No response from Rogers and the replacement map is now up at the same URL. The outgoing LCA is unchanged but the incoming LCA has been changed to exclude certain towns at the extremity of the LCA due north of Montreal. Not so big of a deal after all!
No response from Rogers and the replacement map is now up at the same URL. The outgoing LCA is unchanged but the incoming LCA has been changed to exclude certain towns at the extremity of the LCA due north of Montreal. Not so big of a deal after all!
I think Roger’s is offering one of the best call forwarding feature among the competition.
So before making a phone call check if you and the person you are calling to belongs in the same area so that you’ll not get charged for long distance call.