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Understand that this is an LTE connection, so cell prices apply for overages. I can't find the paper work right now but looking at https://www.telus.com/en/bc/mo... it says a 5 cents per MB overage fee, which works out to $50 per GB and I know my cell provider (Fido) just doubled their overage charges, luckily I don't have a data plan there. And I've seen a few headlines stating that all the big cell providers have upped there overage charges to a hundred per GB (perhaps just in BC). But I haven't tested it.
Hmm, it may have been this article that I saw the headline of, https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/0... which states that Rogers, including Fido boosted up their overages to 10 cents a MB, just like Bell and Virgin Mobile. Perhaps Telus hasn't upped theirs yet. Even 5 cents a MB is way too much

There's no such thing as unlimited media streaming, and prices are usually $30/gigabyte at best for prepaid.
See for yourself. Here are comanies that offer full nation-wide coverage (not just small urban areas). Make sure you check the prices for additional data.

Telus, Bell, Rogers, Virgin, Koodo.

ffs, if someone needs two-factor authentication several times a day, they can afford a goddam phone plan which doesn't charge per SMS. the most i've ever paid for an SMS was, like, $0.02 when i was a poor grad student using a tracfone. now i have a $30/month plan with unlimited SMS. as i understand it, the US was the worst place for this, and it's going extinct here.

Canada has always been worse. It's standard that receiving calls uses local minutes, and receiving texts costs the same as sending them. For reference, the rates on a basic Telus pay-as-you-go plan:

$0.15 per minute on local calls
$0.30 per message

Another comparison, showing average monthly bills in Canada are higher than the US. Canada requires majority Canadian ownership of any carrier, which limits foreign competition (eg: Wind mobile when it first entered the market), with the result that the big three raise their rates in lockstep and 85% of Canadians have no alternatives. They try to make it look good by buying up the small players (eg: Telus now owns Mobilicity and Wind, Rogers owns Fido), but then they'll place tight limits on coverage for example to make them less attractive. So if you are only ever in downtown Toronto, Ottawa , Vancouver, Calgary or Edmonton, then Mobilicity is fine. But if you leave those areas, you get either no coverage or get charged for roaming.

Interesting, but Telus still charges $35: http://www.telus.com/en/qc/get...
Bell also charges (no specified amount): http://support.bell.ca/Billing...
Rogers charges $50: http://redboard.rogers.com/201...

It seems that C-343 hasn't been accepted yet. http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInf...

Telegraph is probably cheaper than SMS.. !60 cents per message! Canada to US with Telus.

Weird. It's included in the base cost of my plan with Koodo, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telus. Unlimited international texting. And I've had months where I sent over 3000 international texts (not just to the US... to friends/family all over Europe, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa) without seeing it show up on my bill, so I can vouch for it actually being international, and for "unlimited" being at the very least an arbitrarily large number that's beyond what I would consider heavy usage.

You might want to look at this: http://mobility.telus.com/en/ON/mobile_messaging/int_mess.shtml?INTCMP=ILCq4srvesmsg2
$10/mo as an addon gets you unlimited international texting with Telus... considering that all of their current plans currently have unlimited domestic texting already, not a bad deal, I suppose. Perhaps you need to change to a current plan offering? I know a few people who got dinged when Koodo started the unlimited domestic long distance included thing, because they were on a grandfathered plan and didn't change over before they started making LD calls....

I'm not sure what the nuances are, but if you mean Satellite TV, yes, we have them in Canada.
http://www.shawdirect.ca/english/default.asp
http://www.bell.ca/Bell_TV
http://www.telus.com/content/tv/sat/

The Sprint and Verizon (and Au) networks are an evolutionary dead-end, so I wouldn't expect a lot of people to be working on inter-operability with them beyond the minimum necessary to make things work. Note that Au is rolling out LTE, which will put them on the GSM Alliance track. Their CDMA-2000 network will be left for voice only for some years, however. I expect a similar situation will follow in the US.

Verizon is rolling out LTE as well, and Sprint will be doing so as well, so, yes, it appears the US situation is similar to the Australian situation. Telus are "eventually" doing LTE, and Bell Canada are already doing HSPA+ and LTE, so it looks as if Canada are going the same way. I suspect any other markets that still use cdmaONE/CDMA2000 protocol stack are doing similar things, given that Qualcomm killed off UWB, making cdmaONE/CDMA2000 a dead end.

Still, CDMA-2000 and W-CDMA are very different technologies in some ways (aside from both using CDMA), and thus you can't expect one phone to work on both, unless they built both systems into it, which would raise the cost.

Well, yes, one such phone costs USD 199 and above; dunno what other phones use chips capable of handling both CDMA2000's air interface and W-CDMA.

I'm in Canada. I pay $30/mo for 3mbit/512kbit ADSL, with a 200GB cap. The cap came in really handy when one of my HDDs died, and I had to re-download a lot of steam games.

Canada has had such a law for a long time. After all - the major backbones were funded by the government, and therefore taxpayers, so why should we be locked in to monopolies? Unfortunately for us, just as the US is considering such a law, Canada is considering revoking it.

Sure I can get 30MB access for $65, but that's like buying a 40 seat bus to carry your family of 4. More than you need is great if you don't have to pay for the extra.

Right now you can get 3-6mbit ADSL for $30/mo without a contract. With a contract, $40/mo will give you ADSL speeds of up to 15mbit. $45-$55/mo will give you the same speed with cable.

Considering that we have less population density than the US (and therefore higher upkeep costs per subscriber), I think the law is doing its job quite effectively.

Links/proof:

http://www.teksavvy.com/en/abc_resdsl.asp?ID=2&mID=1
http://www.teksavvy.com/en/resdsl.asp?ID=7&mID=1
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/internet.portal;GEMSESSIONID=vMQVKY3XsKBv1cQyx2xmKTJn322pxDn1LNp2yfw84xGM2wpQNg2n!1182660780?_nfpb=true&_windowLabel=PrsShpInt_NewAccess_internetBrowse_portlet&PrsShpInt_NewAccess_internetBrowse_portlet_actionOverride=%2Fportlets%2Fpersonal%2Finternet%2Fbrowse%2FgetDetailPage&_pageLabel=PrsShpInt_NewAccess
http://www.telus.com/portalWeb/inlineLink/CP_SCS/General/Internet/High_Speed/General/Compare_Plans/?_region=BC
http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/High-Speed/

Telus and Shaw in BC are both 60GB for basic service. Not to be confused with the 'Lite' service they both have, capped at 10GB.

http://www.telus.com/portalWeb/inlineLink/CP_SCS/Product/Internet/High_Speed/Compare/High_Speed_Plans_and_Prices/?_region=BC
http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/

Honestly skreeech, you should take the few seconds to look it up if you're going to post "facts" here for everyone to read. It's just courtesy.

When I inform them that they need their own, they ask how much. I inform them of AVG and ClamAv* and that those two are at no cost. They then state they cannot be any good if they are free and they go buy either Norton or McAfee.

Perhaps you should listen to them. Many ISPs do provide free antivirus software as part of their service. Its true that you do still have to install it, but that's a separate issue.

For example, in my area, we have Shaw for cable, and Telus for DSL:

Shaw: Shaw Secure (powered by F-secure)
  https://secure.shaw.ca/apps/shawsecure/

Telus: Telus Internet Security (powered by Zero Knowledge Systems)
  http://about.telus.com/bav/jumpL5.html

Both are free as part of your broadband service subscription.

As an added bonus, if a user has a problem with either package the ISP customer support will provide them free phone support. Both ISPs phone support, while manned by your typical CS monkeys, is quite responsive, and usually able to handle most basic problems, and is far better than what I've seen users get from Norton and McAfee et al.

If you happen to be a telus or shaw subscriber I wouldn't hesitate to recommend using either of their free packages. You -are- paying for them. I have nothing against ClamAV or AVG, but having them call their ISP instead of us for first level support is worth it. :)

cheers

Shaze to abuse @ 2:01 pm (51 minutes ago)

How can your customers be held personally accountable for any charges or offenses committed from an IP address, when free wireless is the default setup of every router?

Doesn't this make your company's participation in the matter, an accomplice to extortion? Shouldn't you follow the actions and intentions of our government when dealing with it's people.

----
Reply

Abuse Teluscom @ 2:44 pm (8 minutes ago)

We are simply passing on the complaint we received from the copyright holder, making you aware of the problem so that you are aware of the issue which gives you a chance to secure your wireless. It also covers us in case they decide to sue. No on has been sued in Canada yet.

Sincerely,

Dale
Internet Abuse Team Member
Consumer Customer Operations
TELUS Communications
http://www.telus.com/internetabuse
Email: abuse@telus.com
**Please include the original email in any replies.

From the Telus site: "Get a Free DELL(TM) DIMENSION(TM) 1100 Desktop computer with TELUS High Speed Enhanced Internet on a 3 year Rate Protection plan" http://promo.telus.com/tm/06/q3/highspeed/?BAC-cs0 6q3HSpeed&link=myt

Ummmm no. Not even close.
http://promo.telus.com/tm/06/q3/highspeed/?BAC-cs0 6q3HSpeed&link=tcomhome

Canadians know how to give free sh*t away. Just look at our trees and water!

http://promo.telus.com/tm/06/q3/highspeed/?BAC-cs0 6q3HSpeed&link=flames

Free Dell Dimension 1100.

It may not be a router, phone and modem all in one, and it certainly doesn't run Linux, but it's also a complete PC.

Kinda like this?

In BC (and maybe other provinces) Telus (ADSL ISP/Telco) is giving away a free Dell computer if you sign up for 3 years of High speed internet.. sure the internet is $40 a month, and you have to have a phone line on top of that.. but it's a FREE COMPUTER!

http://promo.telus.com/tm/06/q3/highspeed/?BAC-cs0 6q3HSpeed&link=flames

Late comment, but isn't Telus a Canadian company?

http://about.telus.com/contactus/storelocations.ht ml

What does Canadian law have to do with US law? Why are people so quick to yell "The US Sucks!" whenever they hear the word lawsuit without even reading to see if it is in the US?

Here is the promo I suspect: http://promo.telus.com/tm/05/q3/highspeed/index_sw itchDM.html

Cancellation terms seem pretty clear to me as well:

" $120 cancellation fee applies to early Rate Protection Plan termination. "

Telus charges extortionate rates if you don't pay them 7 Canadian dollars per month to subscribe to a long distance plan.

How can they possibly claim that they took an ethical approach when they unilaterally terminated access to a website that depicted Telus in an unfavorable light. Whether the site in question was violating other contractual obligations or law is independent of the actions of Telus.

" Fellow TELUS team members:

Central to TELUS' purpose is to make the future friendly for our stakeholders. One of the critical elements in realizing this ambition is to ensure our individual and collective reputation is above reproach. How we work is just as important as what we do. Our goal is to demonstrate the highest level of ethics and integrity in our business dealings with all stakeholders (customers, shareholders, suppliers, colleagues, community). This is a corporate priority and a shared responsibility for all TELUS team members as each one of our actions and decisions affect our company and its reputation."

They've been blocking 80 for non business customers for years. Since the Cadvision takeover (2000?) anyway. Residential: $36.95, Business: $89.95. The future is monopoly.

Besides Verizon owns a good chunk of Telus.

We already got a telecommunications tax in Canada

It's the CRTC. You pay it on the phone, internet, tv, cell, pager.. Not sure about satellite radio (xm radio), but I wouldn't be surprised.

The applicable taxes are GST and HST/QST/PST (depending on which province you live in).

The CRTC has said they will regulate the pricing of VoIP to allow for more competition (so the current incumbents can't shut out competitors). That's pretty much it. background story that explains it - just before the law was passed

As you can see from this press release by one of the telco incumbents just after it passed, this is THE ONLY ASPECT of the Internet that the CRTC regulates.

With today's CRTC decision, Canada becomes the only major industrialized country to regulate retail rates for Internet telephony. That is inconsistent with the CRTC's past decisions not to regulate Internet and wireless services, which today are highly competitive components of the telecommunications sector.

Where I'm from, Calgary Alberta (Canada!), we have a 'wireless city' http://wifinetnews.com/archives/001821.html

Or at least, so is the 'hype', but let me explain how it is:

- Only a small portion of the city is, notably a portion of the downtown ocre
- Any one MAC address is only allowed one hour online at a time.

I realize the article is proposing more then what we have up here, but I was pretty impressed with what my city has done.

Basically, I can go out for lunch, and avoid some bad legal problems if I'm to use my work network for home coding, or what have you. An hour's just perfect for me: but if I want more, it's a Telus (http://www.telus.com/) hotspot, so naturally I can buy more minutes.

I'd love to see this spread city wide, but I'm not really sure the point: taxes would probably have to go up, and either noone will use it when they can use their home networks (over only using an hour a day), etc.

That said, it's a nice on-ramp, it's good for visitors, and I personally like it. :)

The websites for Telus and the CRTC also discuss competition in local and long distance services. Telus provides info on problems with the practices of other local and long distance providers. I first experienced "slamming" (where a telco switches your long distance provider) in 1994 while living in Ottawa, when I was supposed to have Bell long distance, but a scammy company pulled me to their plan.

The websites for Telus and the CRTC also discuss competition in local and long distance services. Telus provides info on problems with the practices of other local and long distance providers. I first experienced "slamming" (where a telco switches your long distance provider) in 1994 while living in Ottawa, when I was supposed to have Bell long distance, but a scammy company pulled me to their plan.

Would you allow me to install some software on your phone line that would interject with advertisements from time to time?

Funny you should mention that. By coincidence, I just got off the phone not two minutes ago with a Telus Mobility customer service rep. You see, this afternoon I got a text message advertisement.

This was extremely disruptive! Here I'm in a meeting, and my bloody phone starts ringing as if our server was down, and it turned out to be a stupid ad.

I was quite angry at this, being offended that I'm paying Telus to advertise to me, so I called them. What they told me? The only way to not receive the ads is to block ALL text messaging.

This infuriates me some more. So now I'm back to the old-fashioned: write a snail-mail letter (which I'll do) complaining and indicating that they'll lose me as a customer if they continue this bullshit.

If I keep getting ads, I'm switching to Fido.

D'yall know that Canada's Telus has been migrating to VoIP for all its long-distance traffic since July 2002? And that it has launched business service to Ontario and Quebec as of November?

VoIP is already here... it's just that the USA lags leading telco providers by about three years!

D'yall know that Canada's Telus has been migrating to VoIP for all its long-distance traffic since July 2002? And that it has launched business service to Ontario and Quebec as of November?

VoIP is already here... it's just that the USA lags leading telco providers by about three years!

Genius. This totally explains the Telus organization.

"Have you shipped my ADSL modem yet?"
"I'm sorry, our system doesn't give us that information."

What kind of ordering/shipping system DOESN'T SAY WHEN THINGS HAVE BEEN SHIPPED, for CHRISSAKES!?!?!?!

I'm also in Canada, and have good experience with both Shaw and Telus. For the non-Canadian viewers, Shaw is a cable company, Telus is a Telco. Neither Shaw or Telus have market penetration throughout all of Canada.

Your basic Shaw account for cable modem, 1 DHCP IP, email, and unlimited surfing is approx. $37.95/mo. Bandwidth is something like 2.5Mbps down, up to 512kbps up. Homepage: http://www.shaw.ca. Pricing page: http://www.shaw.ca/Tmplt.asp?pageID=647

Your basic Telus account for ADSL, 2 DHCP IPs, email, and unlimited surfing is $39.95/mo. Bandwidth is something like 1.5Mbps down, 512kbps up. Home page: http://www.telus.com. Pricing page: http://www.mytelus.com/internet/highspeed/adslquic kconnect.do

Since Shaw is cable, and cable modems have a larger span, they are more often used in rural areas.

Lots of mom-and-pop shops operate in rural parts of Canada. They are hit and miss, although are more often 'miss'. The last thing our corporate customers in rural areas need is the advice of a mom-and-pop shop - albeit good intentioned advice - it generally is worth what it cost (nothing) and often sends customers down the wrong direction.

Both Telus & Shaw provide 24hour tech support. It's reasonable. Support on either Telus or Shaw broadband is most certainly not like having a fiber optic connection, but then at $2,500/mo for fiber and aprrox. $40/mo for broadband, it's somewhat less expensive too ;)

To the original poster: unless you had to pay for build costs (in which case, it's yer own fault for wanting to live in a rural area - you didn't seriously think you get the benefits of the big city AND the country, that'd be like having your cake and eating it too)..

$40/mo is a good price in my not so humble opinion ;)

(for the American viewers, $40/mo Canadian is about $25/mo USD)

Some changes to your math:

$24.95 local phone
+$24.95 DSL service
-----------------
$49.90

I live in Saskatchewan, a Canadian province with a Crown owned telephone company called Sasktel. Their service is excellent, and cheap. So good and cheap, I don't know or care if others can't use their lines which they paid for. They have the largest fibre optic cabling network in the world.

Compare to when I lived in Calgary, in Alberta, with a private phone company called Telus, whose service was terrible. Cut off the phone with no notice for not paying a bill, that they were supposed to charge to the credit card every month, but neglected to do, 18 months after the fact. Then demanding 2 months service fee to get it activated again. Ick.

Anyhoo, that's the story. Crown in Saskachewan > Private in Alberta.

As both a business and cellular subscriber of TELUS I can say that this switch has not been seemless. Over the past too weeks there have been a large amount of issues with their networks. For instance for 3 days in a row for the first 3 hours of our business day our phones could not dial out, or recieve calls. We were not notified that there was a shortage, and were baffled, thinking it was our Meridian storage. Their cellular service has been spotty at best, again with the lack of ability to dial out or recieve calls (fast busy, no voice mail). This has been a severe inconvenience too me. There are other local providers who have been providing great VOiP service in our center for one, that is clearly a better choice. Telus has also been offering their own brand of VOIP service for residential and business customers. This is not a new endeavor for Canadian telecom, but it is a good switch. Perhaps soon we may see free telecom w/the purchase of internet services (monopoly what?). The question is, when are major corporations going to go with a free software VOIP service (H.323) over expensive proprietary Nortel software.

Just another reason NOT to get a fancy phone with internet abilities - Phone Spam.

Nahh.. I've got a nice new phone from Telus which supports 1X, SMS, two-way text messaging and all the other cruft; but I didn't get it because of that, I got it despite all of those features. I couldn't care less about surfing the WWW or reading e-mail on this small screen (small for a computing device, large for a cellphone). I got the phone because it was inexpensive and came with four months' of free airtime and an additional $100 credit towards my bill for a very low rate ($129.99 plus tax) and free activation. When I activated the phone, I simply told the girl not to add any web/text features - period. If I do decide later down the road that I want (some of) them I'll have the option. I like having choice, and eliminating all the phones that are web, 1X, or text-message ready severely reduces my choice (to almost nothing; most new digital phones nowadays are capable of all these features)

Also folks outside Canada might think that "Bell Canada" was coast-to-coast-to-coast (Arctic ocean). But its only in Ontario and Quebec - mind you those are the two biggest provinces. Also the monopoly from the West - Telus - is finally moving into Ontario and Quebec. Don't get me wrong - Bell Canada is still huge!

Bell is definitely pervasive in Canada, but (for the Americans who don't know, but still care) thankfully you don't HAVE to go with them on a number of aspects.

You can go with alternative long-distance companies; they may or may not have to pay Bell for the "privilege," but if you're not a Bell supporter then you can at least avoid paying the whole enchilada.

Cellphone service can be provided by Rogers or Telus if you're so inclined. Personally, if I needed a cellphone, I think I'd go with Telus... any company that markets their products with squirrel monkeys can't be all that bad. :)

With satellite, you do have at least one other choice, StarChoice. You can also always go with cable, if you're willing to deal with the cable company (Rogers for me, often Shaw elsewhere or Videotron in Quebec).

ISPs, now there's a sore spot. In terms of DSL, the only alternatives are generally small, local services who still have to pay a bit to use Bell's lines. It's either that or cable (again). On the other hand, I know that at least one DSL provider in Ottawa supposedly goes without a transfer cap.

So you do have alternatives in most areas, but more often than not Bell is there in some capacity, or else you go with the dominating cable company in your area. At least Bell is better than AOL Time Warner down in the states, who practically dominates what Americans see and hear...

Anyway, I hope I will be getting ADSL soon, which would solve that problem. So then all I need is the Neverwinter Nights client for Linux to come out and I can switch over :-).

Yes, this message was written over broadband. I didn't ever say the Aussie broadband situation wasn't bad. I have great respect for the country's history as well, so don't take it personally mmmkay? Now, let me put it to you this way. Telstra is an Australian-based company, if I'm not mistaken, and a very successful one at that. It is traded on the Australian stock exchange. That means that some people in your country, though perhaps not yourself or the original slashdot poster, actually support this company. This is called dollar voting. A company can't succeed unless people actually buy its products. While you support a company, no matter if you like it, your complaints are meaningless. Action speaks louder than words.

Now let me tell you how it is here. In this Canadian city, we have one real telephone company, Telus. We also have one cable company, Shaw. This is by no means a tiny city either, though not huge. Shaw provides cable-based broadband service. When they first provided it about 5 years ago, their service was horrible. We had outages for weeks sometimes, DNS problems, poor tech support (they specifically told many non-Windows users that in spite of the problem being their fault they wouldn't correct it because the people weren't using Windows). It was pure bullshit. They have improved some in that time but man did they ever suck and they were about the only option until cheap home DSL arrived. Initially it was only 3 real companies who provided it. CADvision, Nucleus, and Telus. Telus still to this day has bandwidth limits and poor tech support. Being the only telephone company around they have an attitude of not caring about the concerns of customers because they assume those customers have no choice, which is mostly true. CADvision was a decent provider, heck before I had cable all I did was connect via 14.4 modem through them. Then it was eaten by PSInet and went downhill. Now, it's been eaten by Telus. Yep, phone company now owns two of the largest ISPs in the city. Nucleus is still around and isn't half bad.

But you know all that took 5 years to really happen here and I don't ask you to pity me because that'd be the pussy thing to do. If I want change, I'll bloody well get out there and make it happen but you know what? I don't give a shit. I made my point in the parent post and there are much more pressing things in the world to worry about than whether or not you can apt-get update your debian packages or play Quake 3 Arena with decent latency.

- ACPlus

Unfortunatley, much of the hardware that was developed for Ricochet has been discontinued. Hopefully the AirCard 400 can be brought up to speed again.

Although it may be tough, with GPRS, EDGE, 1xRTT gaining ground around the world. Word on the street is that Telus Mobility (Canadian) will have 1xRTT up for Q1 next year.

This bad boy can run up to 150kbps on only 1xRTT.

Just wait until 2x and 3xRTT hit the market.

What I'm still trying to figure out is if ONE standard has been chosen for REAL 3G/UMTS. The recent AT&T adoption of GSM/GPRS would suggest that WCDMA is not the way to go?? anybody?

Personally, I'd much rather see all pager and cellphone traffic moved to its own "area code", meaning that to dial those numbers, you'd need 10 digits, and everything else (copper-wire-connected) that is "local" only use 7 digits. It may make matters interesting if you want to call from a cell phone to a local number - you'd only want to use 7 digits - but I'm sure those Eletrical and Electronic Engineering wizards could easily cook up a switching system.

--

Personally, I'd much rather see all pager and cellphone traffic moved to its own "area code", meaning that to dial those numbers, you'd need 10 digits, and everything else (copper-wire-connected) that is "local" only use 7 digits. It may make matters interesting if you want to call from a cell phone to a local number - you'd only want to use 7 digits - but I'm sure those Eletrical and Electronic Engineering wizards could easily cook up a switching system.

--

In the more well-connected communities there are some local providers that have gotten into the DSL market. In Calgary, this includes Nucleus Information Services and Cadvision and probably a few others. The phone company (yes, the ONE phone company) here which also provides DSL is Telus Communications. I know that in many communities such competition does not exist, however.

http://www.shaw.ca

Maybe the lower price is because @home has real competition here. You can get DSL service starting at $445 a year ($38/month CDN, ie. $26/month US)

http://www.cadvision.com
http://www.telus.com