[DrCaleb]

Rogers-Shaw merger will 'only help big telecoms profit more on the backs of Canadians,' NDP says

$1:

Freedom Mobile has previously been credited for driving down prices in the overall market. For instance, in 2017, it began offering 10 GB plans for $50, leading the big three to lower their prices and match that offer.

In its press release announcing the deal, Rogers pledged not to raise the prices of current Freedom Mobile customers for three years. It also promised to launch a new $1-billion fund to improve connectivity in rural, remote and Indigenous communities, expand its low-cost internet offerings for seniors and low-income individuals, and invest billions in its 5G network buildout. The company declined a request for an interview Monday.

After that, Freedom Mobile customers are screwed.

And the Government is investing far more than $1B on rural high speed.

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/139.nsf/eng/h_00002.html

[CDN_PATRIOT]

$1:

Rogers pledged not to raise the prices

Yeah, right. How many times have we heard that, and then prices go through the
roof? A**holes.

-J.

[llama66]

Well, I guess I keep Telus.

They need to allow a US or European company to set up shop here.

[DrCaleb]

llama66 llama66:

Well, I guess I keep Telus.

They need to allow a US or European company to set up shop here.

Telus sucks the hardest. And if Verizon or *gasp* Comcast were to come here, things would even be worse.

[llama66]

I pay $100/Mo for 300Mb and Cable.

[Tricks]

Bell, 100ish for 500 fibre.

[DrCaleb]

Shaw, $90 a month for 3MB down. No TV.

The only alternative out here is SpaceX.

[herbie]

Elon's Starlink will probably do more for people than the CRTC.
I just deleted a huge post as to why exactly the gov't has FAILED.
What's the point, nothing will fucking change. The group of hacks and cronies that earn 10x what you do and have portfolios of telco stock and couldn't even set their own start page will decide everything Internet for you.

[llama66]

Get rid of the Canadian Rogers Telus (and Bell) Cartel.

[DrCaleb]

llama66 llama66:

Get rid of the Canadian Rogers Telus (and Bell) Cartel.

They did that in the 70's in the US with breaking the Bell monopoly on land lines. Look how well that turned out, a race to the bottom.

What government should do is be like Alberta with the so called "Supernet*".

Create the infrastructure, then rent capacity to the Telcos. They can't control the price any other way. If they try to legislate it, the lobbyists take over. If they break companies up, they just end up re-amalgamating in a couple decades.

Own the infrastructure, and set price caps.

*May not actually be in your area, and may not actually change prices.

[bootlegga]

I don't like monopolies, but Shaw has really gone to shit in the past decade. When I first got them, they had good prices and great service. You could call them and not wait longer than a few minutes, but service there is terrible now, and I've waited almost an hour to get in touch with someone (either by phone or online chat).

Somewhere around 2014, they changed and just started raising cable prices year after year until the package I started with at $78/month ballooned to $130/month - with phone and internet, it was $170/month! And that wasn't for the best cable package or best internet, it was middle of the road cable and internet service. After that, I cut the cord and went with Primus for internet and haven't looked back. Now I get 150 125 MB cable for $60/month, which has been plenty even with the kids doing online schooling and me working from home.

My Mom still uses Shaw and in the middle of the pandemic right before Christmas, they unilaterally disconnected her home phone (she refuses to use a cellphone), even though it was paid in full with monthly bank withdrawals. With the lockdown in effect, they couldn't send anyone to fix it until mid-January. Then they had the gall to charge for to re-connect the service they disconnected!

So I had to waste more than an hour trying to get it fixed and credited back to her. I could give a flying fuck about what happens to Shaw.

On the Rogers front, they have a much better coverage map than Freedom had and I'm only paying $10 more per month for twice as much data...so far they have yet to disappoint me.

[Thanos]

I can't comment on Rogers. Shaw though has done the usual routine on customers and employees too. They kind of led the pack a few years back but not in quality. More like in vicious downsizing of their staff in order to placate their shareholders who were screaming for higher short-term profiteering. As such they're no better and no worse than any of the others, and all of them are just corporate c**** doing what is in their true nature on a daily basis - making sure the exec bonuses remain high, that the customers are just an afterthought, and that the employees are less than an afterthought.

[herbie]

I can only comment that years ago Rogers flooded the area with flyers for their Internet which was cell based, slow as all fuck and capped at less than 1GB.
So many people on the rez owed $2000 bills within a couple months that a delegation came to my office for advice to fight them.
They got my WISP more customers than all my paid advertising ever did.
They also still have there cell tower located so there's a geographical blank spot here that includes the 3 biggest apartment blocks, the townhouse, six square blocks of residences, the Hospital & the Clinic. Haven't addressed that problem since Day One (2002?)
Pretty safe bet to say that here Bell (that shares Telus towers) has more customers than Rogers.

[DrCaleb]

A timely article! (the county I live in)

$1:

'The speed here is atrocious': Parkland County residents upset with slow, spotty internet service

It's a tale of two very different internet providers.

Rudy Zacharias is a Telus Hub customer which uses the LTE network to connect people living in remote areas to the internet.

"The speed here is atrocious. We're getting speeds, right here at my place we're getting speeds of less than one megabytes per second (mbps) and they're promoting it as up to 25," said Zacharias.

He said the service worked well for the first three months he started using it.

"Then they overcrowded the tower, that’s what they told me anyway and they have no plans to enhance that tower anytime soon," he said.

While 1,000 feet away, on the same Parkland County acreage Michelle Holland is enjoying a faster, more reliable internet connection.

"A huge difference," she said.

She’s testing a new service called Starlink, created by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

"Even though it's beta we are getting speeds on average anywhere between 50 to 100 mbps so significantly more and it's close to what people would be getting in the city with fibre optic," said Holland.

It uses satellites to provide internet connections to remote locations.

"And we know that it’s just going to get better and better from here that we aren't going to have these issues anymore it’s a huge relief," she said.

Like her neighbour Zacharias often does now, Holland has have to leave home just to access the internet.

"It's our main connection and having to go to a Starbucks or go to our parents house just to get an internet connection seems a little absurd in this day and age," she said.

[Sunnyways]

Kindly tell me why alleged free marketeer Terry ‘Bellboy’ Corcoran keeps on churning out guff like this for the Big Three:

https://financialpost.com/opinion/teren ... attlefield

Adam Smith comes to mind:

$1:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.