Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada

inject_hotmail.com writes "Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shenanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian taxpayers funded a 'Cell Phone Cost Calculator' so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings. The calculator wound up being yanked a couple weeks before launch. Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues, 'Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.' Moving forward, Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government: 'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"

Comments

Oh well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously its in my best interest if the Phone Company wants to rape me in the ass with my Phone Bills. That's what it said on the TeeVee anyway.

Re:Oh well.

[agnosticnixie]

I think you may have misread your contract with Rogers, we are good clean people who do not partake in this "assrape" thing. Instead, we just want YOUR SOUL. But we have iphones and g1s, look at the nice phone.
Please have my pen.

Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just cell phones. It's cable, internet, phone and long distance plans, dishwashers and other appliances, cars, hydro, banks, investment opportunities. In short, it's life in a capitalist society. It's not so much that we have too much choice; it's that we have too much 'structured' choice (Rogers calls them bundles) wherin you can never get what want, much less what you need. The best you can hope for is that if you have lots of time on your hands, in other words are a full-time consumer, you might find something you can live with for a little bit less than someone you know paid for something similar. Otherwise, and if you happen to be busy, and who isn't in our overworked society, you pay more than you should for something not quite what you want. Yes, that's frustrating!

Re:Frustrating!

[Wonko the Sane]

In short, it's life in a capitalist society.

When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's corporatism, actually. Fascism goes a bit further with the State.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

In short, it's life in a capitalist society.

When corporations have the ability to use government policy as a tool to protect their private interests the correct term is not capitalism - it's called fascism.

This is absolutely correct and when it's in the early stages like this, very few people recognize the danger. They don't seem to grasp that this is not a situation that can improve on its own. On its own, it can only get progressively worse and by the time it's immediately and outwardly obvious that they are living in a fascist state, it's often too late for the people to do much of anything about it other than cower and curse their lack of foresight.

From the summary:

Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees.

The attempt by the cell carriers to halt this project is all the more reason to go through with it. If anything, that should result in additional effort to not only produce the calculator but also to fund a media campaign so everyone knows it is available. The failure to understand this is all that you need to know in order to realize what a bunch of spineless, useless excuses for human beings (they are puppets really) our so-called leaders actually are.

Re:Frustrating!

[Wonko the Sane]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.

Re:Frustrating!

[Dr. Evil]

This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

This sounds like the platform of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Isn't it amazing how "conservative" once meant something like "reluctant to expend governmental resources" and has now come to mean "eager to increase the size and power and involvement of government, but for reasons different from the ones used by those who are called liberals?" Really, that's a neat trick.

Re:Frustrating!

[Dr. Evil]

Today it seems to be more about hands-off domestic corporations, encourage private alternatives to public systems, and alter laws to support home-grown international corporations. The media spins everything into a story and you don't have a story without conflict.

These days, democracy needs to be protected from private interests, and the Conservatives are caving in all the wrong places. I don't like them.

BTW, did you send in your membership to the Pirate Party yet?

Re:Frustrating!

[lysergic.acid]

But that's the ultimate result of all unmitigated capitalist systems. Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates.

Market forces (via economies of scale/scope) almost always push towards a single fully vertically and horizontally integrated monopoly. That's why Wal-Mart beats out little mom & pop stores. So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations. But those things ultimately get in the way of corporate profits, so anyone supporting them is labeled a socialist (which is true in the sense that they care about society and social welfare over money and the economy). And if you're pro-capitalism then you must necessarily be pro-business and support deregulation.

The other problem is that, even though capitalism is supposed to be an economic theory, its effects tend to spill out into politics and other societal spheres. A capitalist society, by definition, is driven by capital. Wealth equates to power in a capitalist society. With wealth, you have access to better education, better health care, and better opportunities. Additionally, having better lawyers means you are treated better in the eyes of the law, and having powerful lobbies means you have exponentially more political influence than your less affluent brethren—and why shouldn't you? you have better nearly everything else, right? If Ayn Rand was right, and the captains of industry do carry the world on their shoulders, then why shouldn't they get to decide public policy? And if everyone's goal in life should be to get filthy rich and look out for only themselves, then can you really blame the politicians who sell out to powerful business interests?

So we shouldn't really be surprised by actions such as these. Everything from health, to education, to political influence is a commodity to be traded and sold. The economy has become an end in and of itself, and one that's more important than public good.

Re:Frustrating!

[FlyingBishop]

Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been calling my Canada fascist for almost a decade now, and until recently all I get for my trouble is funny looks and less offers for drinks at the bar.

Re:Frustrating!

[BlueStrat]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.

That sounds precisely like what President Obama and his minions are doing here in the USA currently, even including the accusations of being "unpatriotic", "racist", and many others that have been leveled at people who are in opposition to his sweeping changes, insane spending in a recession, and takeover of the private sector. As you say, it's easy to spot even in it's early stages...it's just that one has to be willing to accept what ones' eyes and ears tell them, which has been the problem with people here in the US.

There's a reason why Obama has surrounded himself with self-avowed socialists and communists and '60s radical-types. It's not just poor vetting either. He's just gathering the people that have the expertise with the type of government he plans to transition us to, like Van "Che" Jones. When he vowed to "fundamentally change America" he was being perfectly honest.

Socialism/fascism/communism would be a fundamental change from capitalism.

Strat

Re:Frustrating!

[MurphyZero]

And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.

Re:Frustrating!

[pearl298]

I think they learned this from watching US politics.

Are US Political Speeches still considered "Canadian Content" on Canadian TV?

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

Yes, because only aspiring dictators use bombastic rhetoric.

Are you really that shallow? Serious. Fucking. Question. Because if you can't tell the difference between that, and what I was talking about, then there's really no point in discussing this with you. For the more perceptive folks who happen to read this thread, this is an educational opportunity. This, folks, is what denial looks like. Its most distinguishing feature is that it immediately dismisses the valid points I raised while making absolutely no effort to refute it, and does so while attempting to appear superior as evidenced by the overall smugness.

There's something even more dangerous than a wannabe dictator or a government that is heading in the wrong direction. That would be the many people with their heads in the sand who want so badly to believe that "it can't happen here" that they create the excuses, dismiss the warning signs, and ridicule the aware to the point that they virtually guarantee that it WILL happen here. If it doesn't happen here, that will be no thanks to these myrmidons.

Folks, this is so simple it's absurd. Government is not a perfect institution, which we know for a fact because there are no perfect institutions. We also know for a fact that no institution lasts forever. Because it is not perfect, and cannot last forever, government has a failure mode. Be it a military dictatorship or a police state, the failure mode of modern Western government is the totalitarian state. In order to share the parent poster's naive attitude, you would have to believe that both of these are true:

• That no government has ever failed, therefore your government cannot fail
• That when government begins to fail, there are absolutely no warning signs whatsoever that could give an alert, vigilant public the chance to correct the damage before it becomes systemic and leads to total failure.

God damn it, both of those are false and you know it. You know it even if you won't admit it.

When a corporation can shut down a government Web site because it contains factual information that the corporation does not want people to know, that is one of your early warning signs. Go ahead and make excuses for it and tell me it's perfectly harmless; your reasoning will be limp-wristed and and your justifications will be half-hearted because you know deep down that I am speaking the truth.

Re:Frustrating!

[Kumiorava]

Funny, I thought conservatism always meant valuing traditions and status quo and that's what republicans are mostly doing.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.

Please pardon how I put this, but it's a real pleasure to hear from someone who doesn't have his head up his ass. The two party duopoly is one of the pillars of our current situation, and there is unfortunately a shortage of people who can realize that on their own as you have done. As you seem to understand, the general naivete and encouraged ignorance has become so widespread that few people personally know the sharp insight and intuitive brightness which are not only available to human beings, but are in fact our birthright.

Naturally the ability to realize your own inner genius is the first thing that must be stolen from the members of the public in order to promote the kind of stupidity that would have ever allowed our status quo to happen. That, to me, makes this a different kind of evil far beyond the mere desire to be in charge and control others.

Re:Frustrating!

[Skillet5151]

Hooray for faux quotations with no context.
First of all, "corporatism" in the context of Italian fascism is completely distinct from corporate businesses in 21st century Canada.

The word "corporatism" is derived from the Latin word for body, corpus. This meaning was not connected with the specific notion of a business corporation, but rather a general reference to anything collected as a body.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
And on top of that, your quote is a total fabrication anyway.

Some critics equate too much corporate power and influence with fascism. Often they cite a quotation that has been attributed to Mussolini, although it doesn't appear in any of his texts: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Several variations of the alleged quotation exist. However, no text written by Mussolini has yet been found with any variation of the alleged quotation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascism_and_corporatism
I hate the excessive influence of megacorporations (in the modern sense of corporations, catching on?) too but try to find a real precedent next time instead of spouting nonsense that makes us all look like incompetent asses.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I guess all those Canadian MP's must have sore arses from being repeatedly raped by Big Corporate Cock (tm).

Re:Frustrating!

[shutdown -p now]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

The words "corporate" and "corporatism" had very different meanings back then. For Fascists specifically, this meant something closer to Medieval professional guilds, and not at all what we today call "corporations".

Re:Frustrating!

[Shark]

For lack of mod point, amen to you both.

Re:Frustrating!

[icebike]

That is because fascist is the least understood and most often misused description of all political systems.

Nobody has a clear understanding of what exactly it means, in theory, or in practice.

Even the all inclusive, if not overly pedantic Wikipedia admits there is no common definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist

"No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition."

Of late, it has become the pejorative de jour for any system the speaker dislikes.

People would listen to you and buy you beers if you couched your criticisms in terms understood by those at the far.

Re:Frustrating!

[BlueStrat]

And sounds a lot like what was being accomplished by Bush. Unpatriotic was the charge leveled repeatedly. The insane spending was initiated by Bush. The only howls are because a few different groups are getting the payouts and bribes than the Republicans would have given. Many of the payouts are the same under either party. The key to recognize is that the corporations don't care which party is in charge as long as they have been thoroughly bought. In fact, by having 2 and only two parties, the parties can fight over 'issues' and make voting seem important, when the (big) corporations still win. And having small companies die is great for the big corporations because they get them for a song. And it's not stockholders who make out like bandits, it's the actual bandits, CEO's, CFO's and cronies, who have the SEC in their back pocket.

I totally agree, both parties are corrupt, Bush is/was part & parcel to the corruption, and the big corporations have seen this as opportunity to advance their interests. However, the corporations should realize that once the politicians have the power structure in place, they will all be nationalized and the ones in charge now in the boardrooms will be thrown out and the shareholders screwed out of their investments.

I believe that Obama and his minions (not all Democrats or liberals) are intent on taking this to a whole new level and are seeking to radically change the basic structure of this nation to more-resemble that of Venezuela or Cuba, and do it sooner rather than later.

The Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative fighting going on and being egged on in the media and blogs is a distraction, merely a puppet show so the American people don't realize what is coming until it's too late to save the dream of Freedom that drove the Founding Fathers to form this great nation.

Strat

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like what has going on in this country since Reagan, though they really stepped it up in the last administration and Obama is pretty good at keeping it up under the democrat flag.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

Funny, I thought conservatism always meant valuing traditions and status quo and that's what republicans are mostly doing.

The PATRIOT Act is an excellent example of something that was not the status quo. We haven't seen that kind of power grab in this country since Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend habeus corpus, jailed 18,000 or so "Confederate sympathizers" without trial, and spent money that Congress had not appropriated. Yet the Republicans who support the PATRIOT act call themselves "conservative." So, I must conclude that they are using the same word but the meaning has changed drastically. Perhaps for just that reason some refer to this relatively new generation as "neo-conservatives." Too bad that has become such a loaded word.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

That is because fascist is the least understood and most often misused description of all political systems.

Nobody has a clear understanding of what exactly it means, in theory, or in practice.

Even the all inclusive, if not overly pedantic Wikipedia admits there is no common definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist

"No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition."

Of late, it has become the pejorative de jour for any system the speaker dislikes.

People would listen to you and buy you beers if you couched your criticisms in terms understood by those at the far.

For this reason I sometimes call it statism. It's a nice, simple, easily-understood word that does the job and comes with none of the confusion that's built into many similar terms. It also sums up what fascism, communism, national socialism, and all similar systems have in common: the expansion of state power at all costs, the subordination of all significant aspects of life (such as economic and personal liberties) to an authoritarian state, and the devaluing of human life which must necessarily take place before anyone can believe that the people exist to serve the state rather than the other way around.

Honestly, if another totalitarian state should occur anywhere on the planet during my lifetime, the exact name of its political machinery will make little or no difference to me. I think for that reason, "fascism" is often understood to be interchangable with "statism" even though this is not technically correct. That's particularly true for those who have studied a little Latin and are familiar with the word "fasces" (a bundle of rods with an axe protruding) which was often touted as a symbol of (Roman) state power, with the implication being that state power for its own sake was considered desirable or "glorius." For the original fasces, the rods represented corporal punishment while the protruding axe represented execution by beheading, and it was meant to symbolize the state's power over life and limb. A similar sentiment is demonstrated by any politician who dreams of being your master, under any political system, which is probably why it's so difficult to come up with a single concise definition of "fascism."

Now if you want a deeper mystery, just think about how fucked up a person must be to actually want to live in an environment that is as thoroughly saturated with misery and human suffering as a modern totalitarian state. Even if you could be in charge of it, why the hell would you want to live there in such a poisonous environment?

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

The words "corporate" and "corporatism" had very different meanings back then. For Fascists specifically, this meant something closer to Medieval professional guilds, and not at all what we today call "corporations".

I'll be honest with you, this looks like splitting hairs for no good reason. Whether it's a modern corporation or a guild, this is how it works: $NON-GOVERNMENTAL-ENTITY ($NGE) acquires undue influence over the state, to the point that the state begins to represent the interests of $NGE more than it represents the interests of its general public. The state and $NGE learn to work together, so that anytime $NGE needs to get something done that it is not authorized to do, it knows it can grease a few palms and get the state to take care of it. Or, it knows that it can do those things itself and the state will look the other way. Likewise, if the state needs to get something done and wants to avoid scrutiny by not going through official channels, then the state turns to $NGE. Working together, as a duopoly of sorts, they can make sure that the people have no voice in politics anymore, though to prevent a revolution before their power is fully consolidated, they might allow the illusion that the people still have any degree of control. When this is complete, both of them view the people as a dehumanized resource to be mined and exploited as much as possible, like so much oil or lumber. The $NGE will do this by amassing wealth, while the state will often do this by amassing armies and fighting pointless aggressive wars, often against nations that were never a threat to it.

Honestly, whether $NGE is an LLC, a sole proprietorship, a non-profit organization, or a medieval guild makes no difference to me whatsoever. The process is the same because it's a very general and time-tested process that has occurred more than once throughout history.

Re:Frustrating!

[shutdown -p now]

I'll be honest with you, this looks like splitting hairs for no good reason. Whether it's a modern corporation or a guild, this is how it works: $NON-GOVERNMENTAL-ENTITY ($NGE) acquires undue influence over the state, to the point that the state begins to represent the interests of $NGE more than it represents the interests of its general public.

Not at all. So long as we're talking about fascism, keep in mind that this is an ideology, the founders of which came up with the word "totalitarianism" as we use it today, and defined it as "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state". There are no NGOs in a fascist state, by definition of said state! In particular, any guild-corporations were also government-run, and membership in them mandatory. They were run not in the interests of their owners, but solely in the interests of the state (as defined by its rulers).

A few other choice quotes from "The Doctrine of Fascism":

Fascism recognises the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade-unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonised in the unity of the State.

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State.

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management.

So, fascism is a system wherein corporation-guilds (just like everything else) are subjugated to the interests of the state, and not vice versa. What we have today, a system where corporations simply buy out the otherwise-elected governments wholesale, is pretty much the direct opposite of that. The only common thing about them is that general public is screwed either way.

Re:Frustrating!

[icebike]

That's particularly true for those who have studied a little Latin and are familiar with the word "fasces" (a bundle of rods with an axe protruding) which was often touted as a symbol of (Roman) state power, with the implication being that state power for its own sake was considered desirable or "glorius." For the original fasces, the rods represented corporal punishment while the protruding axe represented execution by beheading, and it was meant to symbolize the state's power over life and limb."

I wonder if your interpretation was indeed the historical one, or one invented much more recently.

Those old enough to remember the Mercury Dime from 1916 thru 1945 will remember that symbol on the back.

Images and history here:
http://blog.numismaticnews.net/flipside/Our+Fascist+Dime.aspx

At that time, the symbol was explained as a symbol of the strength which lies in unity, while the battle-ax stands for preparedness to defend the Union.

Long since replaced by a torch, one has to suspect that future generations will accuse the US of officially sponsoring eco-terrorism.

Re:Frustrating!

[Nadaka]

indeed.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: "Despite what conservative libertarians believe, the invisible hand of the free market does not create an egalitarian utopia where the little guys can compete on even terms with the multi-billion-dollar megacorporations or international conglomerates."

An egalitarian utopia is not the intent of the free market according to conservative libertarians. Don't go making up stuff and attribute it to someone else.

RE : "So, in order to force the reality of capitalism to reflect the ideal of capitalist competition, we have to create antitrust laws and industry regulations."

Anti-trust laws and the myriad regulations associated with them are examples of things that stifle and pervert the free market. In short, they are bad things.

Re:Frustrating!

[agnosticnixie]

Funny, the conservatives were always pretty damn keen on some government resources. It has hardly ever meant it.

Re:Frustrating!

[agnosticnixie]

Classics fail. Regulations are considered important to stop trusts and the secretive trade guilds that ended up forming around different trades. An unregulated market doesn't mean nothing is unregulated, and it also means no single monopoly gets to be in charge.

Re:Frustrating!

[dbet]

We have fascism here in the U.S. too. But here's the thing, life is too good to do anything about it. People, well most people, will happily put up with fascism if they still eat well and mostly do what they want. Why? Because the cost of stopping fascism (revolution) is deemed not worth it. Even a mini-revolution, say, the public execution of 10 or 15 "officials", is too risky or costly for anyone involved, no matter how much it is warranted.

Re:Frustrating!

[dbet]

ALL parties want bigger government.

Re:Frustrating!

[BlueStrat]

It's fascinating to watch the mod battle on my comment above.

Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation -1
    40% Offtopic
    30% Flamebait
    30% Insightful
Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier 0 (Edit)
Total Score: 0

Seems like I've stirred up quite the mod-battle. I guess that means I've made people think and/or scared some people who don't want people to read and think. I wonder who might benefit from people not seeing and thus not thinking about the things in my post?

Rom Emmanuel, is that you with the "Flamebait" and "Offtopic" mods from different Slashdot shell accounts?

Strat

Re:Frustrating!

[bzipitidoo]

Tell this to the conservative libertarians: Just like a city with no police, capitalism without existence and enforcement of rules to keep things competitive is unstable. Soon it would no longer be capitalism, but monopolism.

And don't say "regulated", say "policed". The word "regulation" has connotations of strangling, inefficient bureaucracy. The trucking industry in the US was a prime example of this. Used to be the US government ran this weird system in which the destinations and even the routes trucks were allowed to take were tightly controlled. Lead to stupid stuff like trucks being routinely sent on much longer trips than necessary. For instance, a company might own the route from D.C. to Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, but not D.C. to Philadelphia. Any time they wanted to transport goods between D.C. and Philly, they would have to go 4 times as far as needed, so they could pass through Pittsburgh. Another problem was the acquisition of routes with intent only to block a competitor. Rather like a telecoms company trying to sue small cities that want to set up their own Internet service, for "unfairly" competing with it when the company itself is refusing to serve the community because it isn't profitable enough. It was a thoroughly artificial system. There was no sensible reason trucks couldn't take the direct route-- nothing like the roads being inadequate for truck traffic, or reserved for other uses. Thems was just the rules. Those sorts of restrictions should have a familiar flavor: the flavor of DRM.

Just what and how to police the market is the question. Should Microsoft be split, as the courts ordered? Some have used examples like the above trucking regulation mess as reason to push for the elimination of all policing of the markets. These are usually interests who think they'll win the monopoly game if allowed to try, or haven't thought of the consequences if they get what they think they want. They should read up on the history of capitalism in 19th century US. T. Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents thanks to his anti-trust efforts. Railroads already had natural monopolies, and used this ruthlessly to gain ever more power and control. Sometimes though, it didn't work because the shark met a bigger shark, and some found themselves at the mercy of, say, an oil company attempting to monopolize its field. Standard Oil forced some railroads to give them kickbacks, and more. Ultimately, such railroads lost their independence, becoming puppets of the oil company, which found it all the easier to extend their power and control because the railroads had done a lot of the same work, for themselves. Or sometimes they'd see that cooperation and collusion was better than trying to break each other. Another area they found collusion useful was in "negotiating" with workers. One of the sickest things is the screaming of the opposition whenever the government proposes to raise our very low minimum wage. The companies only see that they are saving money if they all collude to lower wages as much as possible. They may see that they wreck the middle class if they get away with that, but they can't restrain themselves. They feel their survival depends on doing what others get away with, no matter how damaging to society. They actually like policing for that reason. They're just fine with rules that prevent destructive competition.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what about Mussolini made him an abomination?

Re:Frustrating!

[Phoghat]

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

What I think is unappreciated or underappreciated about abominations like Mussolini is that nothing they did was a chance, coincident, or accident. They understood very well what they were working for and where it was leading and accomplished it by a series of carefully planned maneuvers, each one of which had its own excuse, its own official story. Usually that story says that this is necessary, good for the country, designed to safeguard the people, intended to stop a national enemy, or that lack of patriotism is the only reason to oppose it. Above all, there is a distinctive pattern to it and once recognized, it is easy to spot, even in its early stages.

Hmmmm, sounds an awful lot like our last president doesn't it? Anyone who thinks that what transpired on Bush's watch was entirely coincidental is an arse.

Re:Frustrating!

[Wonko the Sane]

I wouldn't put money on life staying too good to do anything about it the short term.

Re:Frustrating!

[causality]

I appreciate this explanation. Sometimes opposites are exactly equal. Thus, I suppose the only thing I would add is that whether the corporation takes over the government, or whether the government takes over the corporation, either way their interests become one and the same. I consider the end result of both scenarios to be indistinguishable (as you said about the general public being screwed either way).

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure it's because of daddy issues. Seriously.

Re:Frustrating!

[Cult of Creativity]

Yarrrrr,didn't know I could.

They got real pirates here in the my 'United' States of A'Merica? Don't know what Prez'O'Bama would think of all that.

And how bout the possibilities here in taxachusetts with Curt Schilling? *shivers*
And yes, part of red sox mania, how can I not be when it effects my daily commute.

Re:Frustrating!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he was on the other side. Of course he was bad, we wouldn't fight anyone who is good after all.

Free market

[Jurily]

to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees

OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!

Re:Free market

[noidentity]

OMG competition! Think of the shareholders!

Every business would rather not have competition. The problem here isn't that they tried to eliminate it, it's that the people who put the site up took it down. The deeper problem is that politicians yield to pressure from companies, thus giving said companies power beyond simply controlling their own property.

Re:Free market

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Scott Adams was right : 'Adams introduced the word confusopoly in this book. The word is a combination of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services.'

Re:Free market

[causality]

The word is a combination of confusion and monopoly (or rather oligopoly), defining it as "a group of companies with similar products who intentionally confuse customers instead of competing on price". Examples of industries in which confusopolies exist (according to Adams) include telephone service, insurance, mortgage loans, banking, and financial services.

In other words, things about which the general public is largely ignorant. I suspect that the only reason why the software industry is not included in this list of examples is because the Microsoft monopoly and the Windows monoculture greatly negate the "group of companies" portion of that definition.

Re:Free market

[faffod]

Another way to put it: a free market works when the consumers are educated about the entire cost of their purchase.

Re:Free market

[CodeBuster]

Do you inform your opponent in a game of chess that the move which he is about to make is a mistake or do you instead exploit that mistake to win the game? Perhaps in a friendly game, one between student and master for example, such service may be rendered as part of the learning process. However, eventually everyone must learn to compete in the real game where there are winners and losers and ignorance has a price tag attached. If you don't like a deal or believe that the other side is holding out or obfuscating then threaten to walk away and follow through if you aren't satisfied. People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.

Re:Free market

[Jurily]

People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.

You can't have PhD's in every single area of your life. And please don't bring up financial services when even the knowledgeable (those who do this for a living) ran head forward into the the wall. And how do you negotiate with a multi-billion dollar company? They'll just tell you to go away.

Bah. Who am I fooling. Money is God, customers are Opponents (if not the Enemy), and if they buy your product and it's bad for them, they deserve it and they should feel bad!

Re:Free market

[prod-you]

Not everyone has the time to become a Cellphone grandmaster. This was a tool for the people to use to simplify the process.
This is like the grandmaster burning the novice's move book, because it might give the novice a chance.

Re:Free market

[yuna49]

No matter how educated I might want to be about the options available, I'm still limited to choosing among just those options. I'd like a cellular plan whose cost covers only the network portion and doesn't include a device subsidy. I've looked, and AFAICT, none of the major operators are willing to sell me just a connectivity plan.

I've been on the same plan for about seven years now because I'm a grandfathered Cingular user. Any plan I might switch to costs more for the same level of service as I have now. In comparison to the cost of wireline telephony or Internet connectivity, rising prices for cellular service make absolutely no sense. Since it seems likely that the cost of providing cellular service must have declined in the past decade as past investments in plant are paid off, I'm guessing the carriers are making some significant profits.

I'm all for educating consumers, but even an educated body of consumers can't do much when confronted with oligopoly pricing. There's no "free" market in cellphone service that I can see. If there were, I'd be able to go to AT&T or T-Mobile or some competing GSM carrier, buy a voice-only plan for $30/month, get a SIM chip, and stick it in my existing phone.

Re:Free market

[causality]

However, eventually everyone must learn to compete in the real game where there are winners and losers and ignorance has a price tag attached. If you don't like a deal or believe that the other side is holding out or obfuscating then threaten to walk away and follow through if you aren't satisfied. People get poor deals on telephone service, mortgages and financial services because they are ignorant and lazy not because they are unable to do better if they put some effort into the negotiations.

Part of the problem is that the price tag is not high enough. I say that because it obviously has not provided the necessary incentive to render self-correcting all of this widespread ignorance. To put it simply, that's because a good parasite does not kill its host. That's why major corporations accommodate, encourage, and coddle various forms of ignorance. They rarely or never refuse a sale on the basis of the customer not understanding what he or she is buying. At the same time, they know that if the price tag for such ignorance became too high, that if they abused it too much, there would be a severe customer backlash and a public effort to prevent a reoccurrence. They would be killing their own cash cow if they allowed that to happen.

The only real solution I know is to act on principle. A principled person doesn't want to be ignorant and will take steps to prevent it, whether or not a high price tag is attached to it. It's simply the right thing to do. A principled person doesn't care to be taken advantage of, whether the perpetrator stands to gain millions of dollars or a single penny. For that matter, a principled person does not sign something like a mortgage contract without fully understanding it first. Such people are not known for complaining about things like "predatory lending."

Re:Free market

[AK Marc]

Do you inform your opponent in a game of chess that the move which he is about to make is a mistake or do you instead exploit that mistake to win the game?

I have money and want a service or product. They have a service or product and want my money. We should be working together to trade, not engaging in battle. So why should it be a battle that employs deceit? And yes, chess does involve deceit, as it is a battle, and there are specific "feint" moves intended to deceive. But if an industry does it, then we are no longer in a free market. A free market requires informed customers. And if the companies work to keep the customers uninformed, they are anti-capitalistic. Well, that and most companies also work to increase barriers to entry (grandfathering themselves, of course) which is also anti-capitalistic. The only time a large corporation claims to be capitalistic is when some regulation they don't want is proposed.

But you hit on a point. Corporations often think of it as a battle. Not to battle with their competitor to create the best product so that the informed customers will select it, as capitalism is supposed to work, but against their customers to harm them to the greatest extent they can get away with by giving them the cheapest product at the greatest price.

Re:Free market

[billcopc]

They think of it as a battle, because that's how society has dressed it up for centuries. "us vs them" is a very seductive packaging for any idea.

Now if only people could realize that we spend most of our lives talking about, worrying about and being slaves to money, well then maybe they'd find a way to write money out of the equation and we could go back to fucking like rabbits.

Re:Free market

[CharlyFoxtrot]

But you hit on a point. Corporations often think of it as a battle. Not to battle with their competitor to create the best product so that the informed customers will select it, as capitalism is supposed to work, but against their customers to harm them to the greatest extent they can get away with by giving them the cheapest product at the greatest price.

Couldn't agree more. Something tells me this adversarial model could go a long way towards explaining behaviour like piracy too. Who doesn't like to raise the middle finger to the goliath trying to beat them ?

Re:Free market

[trytoguess]

Technically, companies are still trying to compete with each other via this method imo. Only thing is instead of a healthy competition, it more like some biblical battle between God and Satan for souls. Minus the theoretical good guy of course.

Re:Free market

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is where the 50,000 word Terms of Service agreement comes from. They will print it in tiny type on some small piece of paper or on another linked web page and then just require you to check a box saying that you have read and understand this insane contract you are agreeing to. Things like "we reserve the right to increase our prices as we see fit." They bank on people not reading that stuff and even if people do read it, how many truly understand it? Next time you talk to customer service try asking their agents to explain the ToS to you, even they have trouble understanding it because most of them have never read it either. They just know which sections to tell you to look (if even that) when there is a dispute.

Re:Free market

[plague3106]

You can't have PhD's in every single area of your life.

You don't need a PhD to get cell phone service or a mortgage, or any of the other examples listed. You can also aquire quite a bit of knowledge on your own as well, if you choose to do so. Not enough to make you anywhere near an expert, but enough to know what you're talking about buy making a purchase decision.

And please don't bring up financial services when even the knowledgeable (those who do this for a living) ran head forward into the the wall.

Huh? Plenty of people (and banks and credit unions) didn't take the stupid bet when buying or selling mortgages. My CU for example never offered the kinds of mortgages that took down the market, they were never in crisis, never in danger of collapse. Nor was my mortgage, because I could actually afford it. Of course I thank those morons that did.. I was able to lower my interest rate over 2% (4% for my small home equity loan), get enough money back to do some major projects on the house, keep my payment within $20 of where it was, AND didn't extend the date at which my house will be fully mine. Saved me quite a bit of money and was able to improve my house at the same time.

And how do you negotiate with a multi-billion dollar company? They'll just tell you to go away.

You answered your own question. And if everyone actualy did just that, went without if you had a choice of only being screwed by A or B, A & B would change to offer better terms. But this constant "I have to have it" attitude only screws yourself. Sure, I worry more now about the employment market even though I'm employed.. but at the same time, there have been great deals out there, and companies have been bending over backwards to get my business. And if they don't, they can go screw, because right now, someone else WILL want my business.

Re:Free market

[plague3106]

Who said god was a good guy anyway? Love him or burn in hell? Do what he says or he'll inflict pain and suffering on you? That might be what a wife beater considers love, but that's not what I consider love.

Free press

[da_matta]

This is where you need free press that attack like a pack of pitbulls and demand to know who ordered the cancellation and why. Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.

Re:Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is Canada, our politicians are already a humiliation.

So good luck with that strategy.

Re:Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared with the rest of the developed world i.e. Europe and the US (in some respects) we are country miles behind in the adoption and the availability of technology. I know this comes to many as a surprise but if you have ever visited Western Europe i.e. UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark in the last 10- 15 years you know exactly what I mean. Even just take a trip to a Best Buy in the US, you will find products choices not available in Canada. Why I don't know but I suspect it has to do with unenlightened gov. regulations quelling the level of industrial competition. You want lower cell prices start asking yourself why can't I shop with Vodaphone, Orange, Tmobile, Verison, AT&T but being screwed by Rogers is a solely Canadian privilege. We don't need new government or parliament, what we need is bottom up Revolution. This Old English style conservatism that rules this land is spent and should be swept away!

Re:Free press

[beadfulthings]

Pit bulls--the real ones--are notoriously illegal in Ontario: http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/about/pubs/dola-pubsfty/dola-pubsfty.asp. Apparently that's not so in the rest of Canada, but since the government is located there, the press might want to consider attacking like a pack of chihuahuas, or perhaps Cocker Spaniels.

Re:Free press

[kent_eh]

Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness.
Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y, because it won't be profitable to have half of a small pie.
And a price war in a small market leads to mutually assured destruction.

Re:Free press

[shma]

Unfortunately, most of the newspapers in Canada are owned by one company, CanWest Global, which has exerted its editorial control over city papers so they match the the political leanings of its owners (first helping the Liberal party, now the Conservatives).

Re:Free press

[causality]

This is where you need free press that attack like a pack of pitbulls and demand to know who ordered the cancellation and why. Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.

Unfortunately you need good honest people to become interested in politics too. Otherwise every election is just a "lesser evil" type of choice and you never get anything like the self-correcting system that you describe here. The ability to choose your form of corruption is not real honesty, just like the ability to choose your master is not real freedom.

Re:Free press

[Garbad Ropedink]

Castrated toothless Pitbulls make lousy attack dogs...

Re:Free press

[JustOK]

And the Irvings own the east coast print media

Re:Free press

[radtea]

Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness.

And with particular regard to the GP's point that there is stuff available at Best Buy in the US that isn't in Canada, this has mostly to do with a combination of the US having a larger population and a wider income distribution. That means that low-end items that would have a substantial market in the US simply wouldn't get picked up frequently enough in Canada to make it worth going through the added cost of importing them here.

Re:Free press

[kirillian]

So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?

Re:Free press

[causality]

Sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but it all comes down to profit margins, and general corporate laziness. Canada has a pretty low population (and even lower population density) than most of the places you mentioned. The retailers know that the marketplace won't sustain high profits if there is a lot of aggressive competition, so the companies generally don't enter into aggressive competition with each other. If I'm selling widget X and you're selling thingie Y, I'm not going to start selling thingie Y, because it won't be profitable to have half of a small pie. And a price war in a small market leads to mutually assured destruction.

But that actually IS a conspiracy theory. It's a valid one, too. When all or most of the companies in a market collude together to produce a situation that benefits them at the potential expense of everyone else, like what you just described, they are indeed conspiring. That they do it out of mutual self-interest and not on behalf of a more abstract agenda doesn't change this. That they do it by means of business decisions and not by secret meetings in smoky back rooms doesn't change this either.

We really need to get over the term "conspiracy theory." "Conspiracy theory" does not mean "instant way to halt all debate by stigmatizing your opponent," nor does it mean "instant excuse for dismissal without examination." It means "theory concerning people who work together in certain ways." There's nothing magical about the word "conspiracy" either. If you work at a company that makes widgets, you and all of your coworkers are conspiring to make widgets.

It's sort of like the word "sanction" in that it does not necessarily indicate a bad or undesirable activity, it's just often used that way and has taken on a connotation which excludes other things that it can mean. This is particularly true in the minds of people who don't really understand the words they are using. If you do a good deed and are rewarded for it, you have been sanctioned. However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way. Something similar has happened to the concept of a conspiracy theory and all of the well-meaning yet not very courageous people who tiptoe around that phrase when it really is the one that applies.

Re:Free press

[ceoyoyo]

Don't be making fun of the land pirañas. Chihuahuas are funny little dogs individually, but if they're ever again allowed to form large packs you'll find out why they were universally feared in days of yore.

Re:Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they apologised for Celine Dione though, eh?

Re:Free press

[causality]

Pit bulls--the real ones--are notoriously illegal in Ontario

I generally oppose such restrictions, viewing them as the government's way of telling us that it needs to have its size and power reduced because it has run out of real problems to address. However, I will tell you why I don't care much (either way) about this one. By and large, people seem to want to own pit bulls because they think it's cute or flattering to have a creature that is kind to them (the owner) and aggressive or potentially aggressive towards everything else. I guess it makes them feel special, and people engage in such ego gratification with things like cars and job titles so it's not really absurd that they would do so with their pets. After all, unlike a car, the pet seems like it is choosing to adore its master.

You know how you never or almost never heard about pit bulls or pit bull attacks in the news media until a few years ago? It's because they became something of a trend, and consequentially their greater numbers have lead to more visibility. Just consider, for what other reason would it suddenly become trendy to desire as a household pet a creature whose breed is optimized for fighting? When something becomes a trend, do you ever wonder, "of all possible things, why that thing?"

And to any would-be Captain Obvious, I know that there are non-aggressive pit bulls which are gentle because they were raised to be that way. I also know that if I wanted to have a dog that I could trust to not make unprovoked attacks against other animals and people, I would not start with a breed that has this reputation.

Re:Free press

[Jurily]

Nothing teaches politicians honest like public humiliation.

Hit their wallet.

Re:Free press

[causality]

So, really, we need Press that isn't owned by the politicians that they are reporting on?

It's not so much that the press is owned by the politicians. It isn't. It's that both the press and the politicians are owned by similar (and sometimes identical) monied interests, many of which operate through various think tanks, front groups, and foundations because they have much to hide. Behind these fronts you often find various "old-money" families which are also openly active in politics. In that way, the aristocracy is alive and well in (North) America. In the cases where it is not outright ownership of the media, it is instead that the advertising-driven media could not survive for very long if it pissed off the deep pockets which purchase airtime.

Re:Free press

[Belial6]

Insightful. Don't you know, there are no conspiracies. All of the laws against conspiracy to commit crimes are just there to make you think that there are conspiracies. When you think there are conspiracies, you are just being duped by "them". When you think that sometimes crimes (or non-criminal acts) are discussed ahead of time by more one person, you are just falling for their plan. After all, that just what "they" want you to think.

Re:Free press

[Vintermann]

Dogs are great for lonely people. They are also great for lots of other things, but "self defense" should not be one of them. A dog is not unduly bothered by the things we call "conscience", and it is by human standards retarded and hopelessly emotionally dependent (upon its owner). Its natural weapon will hurt you in much the same way a pair of rusty, dirty scissors would do. What would people say if you hired a human bodyguard like that?

Oh, I'm sure they would be afraid of your Norman Bates-with-scissors bodyguard. No one questions that combat breed dogs are effective at scaring people. But they scare people because they are willing and eager to harm people in nasty ways.

I don't mind a ban of dogs like these. IMO, if you want to intimidate and harm people, you should do it yourself. But since even police use dogs to escape the emotional impact of performing violence themselves, I don't hold out much hope for change.

Re:Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also worth noting that the attorney general who outlawed pit bulls murdered a cyclist on street after a fender bender. He trapped the cyclists arm in the window of his car and bashed him into polls repeatedly until he died. I don't think the dogs are the monsters up there, the politicians are.
P.S. My pitbull is currently licking my cat.

Re:Free press

[tyldis]

Here in Norway there is a similar service. The best part? It is actualy run by a government agency to aid consumers in the jungle of cellphone and broadband plans. (http://www.telepriser.no/ , in Norwegian only)

Re:Free press

[billcopc]

Humiliation doesn't work on our politicians, they bathe in it every single goddamned day and THEY LOVE IT!

What we need is a JFK style assassination or two, a little scare to wake them out of their circle-talking stupor.

Re:Free press

[billcopc]

However, if you read a headline which says "U.N. sanctions $NATION" it's assumed that $NATION was punished in some way.

That has less to do with the word "sanction" and more to do with the U.N., which never does anything good in the world, so whenever they appear in the news, we assume it's bad news.

Perhaps a more familiar term for these corporate conspiracies would be "cartel", or did I attend the only high school that taught what a cartel is and why they're evil ?

Re:Free press

[billcopc]

Good timing :

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/09/01/toronto-cyclist-collision-death481.html

Yes, we have our share of dirty rotten self-righteous political fuckwits. They're mostly concentrated in Ontario and Alberta... As to why, well I'm afraid that's up to speculation.

Re:Free press

[Jafafa Hots]

Even if you restrict the use of the word conspiracy to situations where it has a negative connotation, it's STILL pretty routine.

Two people decide to rob a liquor store? It's a conspiracy.

Now look at lobbyists, politicians, prostitutes, perks, payoffs... and tell me there aren't many thousands of illegal conspiracies going on.

Re:Free press

[agnosticnixie]

Sorry to burst your stupid argument, but 80% of Canada's population is concentrated in 4 conurbations - Southern Ontario, the Saint-Lawrence Delta-Monteregia, Vancouver-Victoria and the Edmonton Area.

Re:Free press

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wish would never come true, due to the very nature of election.

Election is based on popularity, so naturally, election will naturally select a candidate who is good at, surprise, getting popular! And, guess what, usually the better liar is better at gaining popularity.

Simply put, being honest in politics is to kill your own political career, so you will never get an honest politician, ever.

Re:Free press

[agnosticnixie]

and all (90%) the french media is divided between Power Corp and Quebecor (Desmarais and Péladeau) who happen to branch off a lot in the english media too.

Re:Free press

[plague3106]

They are also great for lots of other things, but "self defense" should not be one of them. A dog is not unduly bothered by the things we call "conscience", and it is by human standards retarded and hopelessly emotionally dependent (upon its owner). Its natural weapon will hurt you in much the same way a pair of rusty, dirty scissors would do. What would people say if you hired a human bodyguard like that?

I'd be perfectly happy with such a bodyguard. Lets stop pretending I should have any respect for the rights of someone breaking into my house, or even regard for their life.

But they scare people because they are willing and eager to harm people in nasty ways.

You're sadly misinformed. Like all dogs, they have a strong desire to please their owner and be useful. Its not a problem of breed, its a problem of owners. There's no reason a pitbull, raised like any other dog, would be more agressive than any other dog.

I don't mind a ban of dogs like these. IMO, if you want to intimidate and harm people, you should do it yourself.

Not possible; as you said, the dog is an animal without rational thought. People are not.

But since even police use dogs to escape the emotional impact of performing violence themselves, I don't hold out much hope for change.

Moron. Police use dogs because they have a great sense of smell, intelligent, an willing to please their owner. The same reason we bred them to hunt rats, get water fowl, track a fox, or herd sheep.

Police mainly use dogs to sniff out drugs & bombs. Even when they are trained to chase down a suspect, they are trained NOT to kill the suspect.

I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[ickleberry]

It seems to be the worst country when it comes to vendor lock-in (firmware branding, sim locking), long contracts, high costs and craptastic prepaid packages. The one GSM network they have there (Rogers) is only GSM by technology, they use IMEI numbers to make sure people are using the right branded device for the data plan they're on. In any country where there is no CDMA that shit wouldn't fly, of course the Gubmint there don't feel like doing anything about it.

Believe it or not things are actually better in the States because in Canada absolutely nobody understands the concept of a SIM card or an unlocked phone. If I ever visit that country I'm taking an Iridium phone because I'd rather pay $1.45 a minute than support those goons.

Besides the sales assistants there have probably been brainwashed to outright refuse to sell any prepaid SIM cards they might have and do all they can to convince you to take out a 36-month contract even after clearly explaining to them you are only staying for two weeks

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[corsec67]

Besides the sales assistants there have probably been brainwashed to outright refuse to sell any prepaid SIM cards they might have and do all they can to convince you to take out a 36-month contract even after clearly explaining to them you are only staying for two weeks

Yeah, in the US, you can walk in to Safeway and get a $10 TracFone.

Try Japan:
To buy a pre-paid cell phone (you have to buy the phone, even if you just want the SIM card), you have to be registered with city hall, have the right kind of visa (not a tourist visa), and have a landline you can be contacted at.

And then if you don't buy credit for a year the "contract" expires, even though it is a prepaid cell phone. Service costs ¥1500/month, which includes a ¥300/month unlimited SMS/MMS plan.

Although, having unlimited SMS/picture emails for ¥300/month is really nice. Too bad voice is ¥95/min.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[NoYob]

Besides the sales assistants there have probably been brainwashed to outright refuse to sell any prepaid SIM cards they might have and do all they can to convince you to take out a 36-month contract even after clearly explaining to them you are only staying for two weeks

Commissioned sales reps or their manager is on commission and is forcing their subordinates to push that crap.

I am very wary of commissioned sales people at the retail level. Their mentality always degrades to a slash and burn - do whatever is takes to sell the highest commissioned items and who gives a shit if it's the wrong thing or if the customer never comes back.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[notjosh]

I've just moved to Canada and brought my (legally) unlocked iPhone from Australia with me. I have a two year working visa here. Rogers were unhelpful, and said a) they could not let my phone on the network, and b) they could offer me a new iPhone with a three year contract (despite my insistence I'd only be here for two at most, legally). Fido (a Rogers company, of course) were more helpful, offering a month-to-month plan (i.e. no contract) with relatively acceptable rates and allowed me to use my device on the network. Fido++ I avoided any contract at all, though, because there's strong rumour that Bell and Telus are launching a combined GSM network sometime this month (or next) so they can cash in on the iPhone and try and get some roaming dollars when people arrive for the Winter Olympics next year. So competition is soon to arrive, and Canada's mobile telephony options should be much more interesting soon!

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[tagno25]

Besides the sales assistants there have probably been brainwashed to outright refuse to sell any prepaid SIM cards they might have and do all they can to convince you to take out a 36-month contract even after clearly explaining to them you are only staying for two weeks

Yeah, in the US, you can walk in to Safeway and get a $10 TracFone.

Try Japan: To buy a pre-paid cell phone (you have to buy the phone, even if you just want the SIM card), you have to be registered with city hall, have the right kind of visa (not a tourist visa), and have a landline you can be contacted at.

And then if you don't buy credit for a year the "contract" expires, even though it is a prepaid cell phone. Service costs $16.12/month, which includes a $3.22/month unlimited SMS/MMS plan.

Although, having unlimited SMS/picture emails for $3.22/month is really nice. Too bad voice is $1.02/min.

Converted to USD for you.
1000 Yen = 10.75 USD (currently)

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[cob666]

I live the the US and visit Canada quite frequently. I use Verizon Wireless as my carrier in the states and even though I detest a lot of their business practices, they are the only carrier here that has a plan that provides unlimited usage in Canada. For something like $9 per month we get unlimited calling into Canada and while we're traveling in Canada we get unlimited calling with zero roaming costs. For our data plan, we pay an extra $30 per month to get unlimited data usage in Canada. Even with the extra costs, we're still paying less than what it would cost us to have a Canadian cell plan.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[ceoyoyo]

Yup, it's pretty awful. Not QUITE as bad as you paint it though. We certainly do know what unlocked phones are. I had one before getting an iPhone. Ten years ago it wasn't worth it - the contract cancellation fee was $200 and you generally got more of a subsidy than that on the phone. Now, it probably is worth it - the contract cancellation fee is $400 + $100 if you have a data plan. We also know what SIM cards are. Not that it helps much unless you go to Europe - service initiation fees in the US usually make it not worthwhile to buy a local SIM when you go there, unless you're staying for a long time.

The government did feel there needed to be more competition in the cellular market and brought in various initiatives to get at least one more GSM network up and running. I haven't heard what became of that, though building a national network here will quite reasonably take a while.

We have lots of prepaid SIM cards. You can get them at the grocery store. There are no sales goons. Just the checkout girl who couldn't care whether you're buying a SIM card or a People magazine or a bunch of bananas.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[ceoyoyo]

Don't tell Rogers it's an iPhone. Just tell them you have an unlocked phone and need a SIM card. NOT over the phone - go in person to a mall kiosk or store. Get them to start doing the paperwork, THEN show them the phone, when asked. They'll make a big deal out of "checking" it to see if it really is unlocked. But since they've started the paperwork already....

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[notjosh]

Well frankly, I'd rather deal with a person that can help out, rather than make me feel like I'm causing them a hassle. I'm *sure* they know the rest of the market enough to suggest alternatives offer worthwhile advice. At least if they were helpful to me I wouldn't swear off them forever. As it stands now Rogers won't (directly) get my business in the foreseeable future. Now to wait and see what Bell/Telus bring to the table so Rogers don't get a dime.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[causality]

I am very wary of commissioned sales people at the retail level. Their mentality always degrades to a slash and burn - do whatever is takes to sell the highest commissioned items and who gives a shit if it's the wrong thing or if the customer never comes back.

Eh, at some point the customer needs to have a spine. A small amount of preparedness (good old planning ahead, that thing that seems to have fallen out of fashion) in the form of having already evaluated your needs and chosen your product or service before you ever set foot in a store goes a long way, too. For this, Google is your friend.

That's especially true considering that a 36-month contract for anything (like what the GP mentioned) should not ever be an impulse buy. It's not a pack of gum, it's a signed contract. If such things are not bought by means of thoughtless impulse, then some commissioned hawker is not just going to suddenly talk you into it.

Both the USA and Canada have been relatively capitalist societies for a long time now. It's not like this is a new thing that the public hasn't had time to get used to. For that reason, I am amazed that there seem to be so many people who would not consider what I just said to be bleeding-obvious common knowledge. Perhaps this is another thing that is more than adequately explained by a close look at modern government ("public") schooling.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Pitr]

Here's the ugly truth:

Rogers is a horrible company that will treat you like crap, and generally try to rip you off... they're also the best of the bunch. (Actually, I find Fido, which is owned by Rogers, but technically a separate company is a bit better) Rogers will at least work with you a little sometimes, Bell will wait until you're on a contract, then screw you, then say "oh well, have a nice day". Telus is about the same.

Here's a great example of Bell/Telus customer service; A friend of mine bought a Telus blackberry after her old phone started to die. She had frequently been disconnected for failure to pay her bill, despite the fact that she always paid her bill, so I really don't know why she stayed with Telus, but that's another bag of snakes... back to the point. So this phone has horrible issues. She takes it back to get it exchanged for a working one, which apparently she has to wait 3 weeks+ for. Next phone, more issues, exchange again. Gets HER FIRST BLACKBERRY BACK as a "new" phone. Finally when that one doesn't work, she gets a different model which she has to spend hours on the phone over the course of a week to get them to agree to. Here's the kicker; ~$40 charge every time the phone#/account was switched to a different handset. That's right they charge to switch from your broken handset, to a working one (which in this case was also broken).

And I'd STILL deal w/ Telus before Bell. Everyone's got at least one horror story with any given provider, and they're all a bunch of pricks, but having a lot of experience w/ pretty much all of the carriers here, I can't recommend anyone other than Fido or Rogers. It's a case of picking the least of the evils. Kinda like picking your personal bank. (Which is TD btw, or at least stay the HELL away from CIBC!!!)

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[ceoyoyo]

Wait, you were talking about cell phone companies, right?

Rogers is a bunch of bottom feeding sharks. Telus is worse, and I've heard Bell is even worse.

Telus is so bad they had to start up a whole other brand (Koodoo) that, as their primary marketing strategy, makes fun of all the established companies (including Telus). Rogers ALSO has an alter ego (Fido) but at least they bought Fido to suppress competition rather than creating it to escape their bad reputation.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[T0t0r0_fan]

Try Japan:
To buy a pre-paid cell phone (you have to buy the phone, even if you just want the SIM card), you have to be registered with city hall, have the right kind of visa (not a tourist visa), and have a landline you can be contacted at.

Japanese cell phone market is way too complicated, but an actual "prepaid" phone certainly doesn't seem to be a good deal for any circumstances I can think of.

I'm not sure you absolutely have to register with the city hall - I believe sometimes other documents like an IDP (or even credit card) will be recognized. Either way, "confirming identity" is a common bureaucratic procedure for service...

Minimum service is a little less than 1000 yen/month right now, and includes a little more than 1000 yen call time in some situations (i.e. 2-year contract with cancellation fees). Considering that the phone is often free, and there's a crapload of extra features/services, it's really not as bad of a deal as it seems at first.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[zippthorne]

They're just leaving the market open for someone to swoop in who accepts the modest commissions on helping *a lot* of people getting what they really want/need.

Of course, it's our responsibility as consumers, when we find such a salesman, to make sure they keep getting more business than their contemporaries (unless and until they decide to sacrifice all that good will for a few quick unnecessarily high commission sales.)

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Piranhaa]

Although Rogers and Fido appear as two separate companies, they are technically the same. Rogers purchased Fido years ago, so they are now the same company. Perhaps the rep you spoke with at Fido was new or just really didn't care to the same extent as the Rogers rep.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[CodeBuster]

THEN show them the phone, when asked. They'll make a big deal out of "checking" it to see if it really is unlocked. But since they've started the paperwork already....

Why even show them the phone at all? Or if you must, bring in a older GSM phone that uses the same sim card. Companies have no compunction about lying to you so why should you tell them the truth when a lie will do? The real world plays hardball, so should you.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[slazzy]

We have good cellular pre-paid prices in Canada, they are just hard to find. Try Petro-Canada mobility or 7-11 Speakout wireless with their 1 - year expiring minute plans. All piggy back on the rogers network, but prices as low as $2 a month with free caller ID and voicemail goes a lot easier on the pocketbook. Swap the sim into your iphone if you perfer, no data but low prices for voice and text.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[rtaylor]

Really? As a Canadian who visits the US about once a month I would seriously consider using a US carrier with that type rate for Canadian roaming. It's a better deal than living in Montreal and roaming to Toronto.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[jewps]

Probably not a bad idea but chances are you'll need a US address and maybe a SSN.

Back when data was more expensive in Canada (not saying its cheaper now), people thought about signing up with AT&T with the roaming option. In the end, it ends up being cheaper than any Canadian option because we didn't have any unlimited data plans to begin with, not including the $50 plan from Fido which has since been discontinued long ago. Before the Rogers take over, Fido's $50 plan included US data roaming. I'm one of the lucky ones to have that plan grandfathered, loosing the US roaming really kills the deal IMO.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[saskboy]

Now SaskTel has good prepaid. For $20, I can phone as infrequently as I need to, and the minutes don't expire if I make a 1 second call every 2 or 3 months (or something like that). The minutes used to expire if you didn't add another $20 card in that time, but a law change prevented that.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[causality]

I'm not sure you absolutely have to register with the city hall - I believe sometimes other documents like an IDP (or even credit card) will be recognized. Either way, "confirming identity" is a common bureaucratic procedure for service...

It just makes you wonder why they need to do that, or why the government even cares about which payment plan you use for your wireless phone. Generally speaking, the sale of a good or of a service goes like this: you give money, you receive good or service. To insert "government butts in and confirms your ID" between those two steps, there really should be a very good overriding reason explaining why this is absolutely necessary. Are there nations which have fallen apart and descended into anarchy because private citizens may be able to make anonymous telephone calls? That's about what it would take for this to have real merit.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[captmonkey]

I have some bad news for you: Rogers owns Fido. I'm not surprised that Rogers was unhelpful (they are major a**holes when it comes to customer service)but in a couple of years, fido may be going down the same route. The only difference between rogers and fido is the market they are targeting.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

(Which is TD btw, or at least stay the HELL away from CIBC!!!)

Funny you should mention that. Over the decades I've dealt with most of our banks personally or on behalf of friends and businesses, and also way back from the inside when I was a courier in downtown Toronto dealing with the head offices. The impressions the banks left were consistent: Yep, stay the hell away from CIBC and BNS - dirty offices, confused and undertrained staff. TD (now TDCanadaTrust) is a good 'middle-rung' bank. Reasonably competent and normal people, good service, good but not ostentatious offices and branches. Royal - oh dear god. Everything is gilded, and they're aggressively snotty to everyone up to the point they learn they're dealing with a large account. Then they aboutface fawn in the most sickening fashion.

BoM came off as just a little below TD, but not bad like CIBC & BNS. Harder to qualify because I've had less do with them from the customer side.

TD branches can contain the odd incompetent. If you hit one of those and the branch won't deal with it properly, a quick letter to head office always turns the situation right around.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[notjosh]

Well, I of course stated that Fido is a Rogers company, so that's nothing new. But there are definite differences in the services they are offering and how they do it.

As I mentioned, Fido offers plans with no contract. Also, they waive the system access fees. They also offer per-second billing (which I don't recall Rogers offering, but I could be wrong)

As another post stated, it's a lesser of all evils, and that's the best we can hope for

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[shutdown -p now]

It seems to be the worst country when it comes to vendor lock-in (firmware branding, sim locking), long contracts, high costs and craptastic prepaid packages. The one GSM network they have there (Rogers) is only GSM by technology, they use IMEI numbers to make sure people are using the right branded device for the data plan they're on. In any country where there is no CDMA that shit wouldn't fly, of course the Gubmint there don't feel like doing anything about it.

I moved to Canada about half a year ago. Right then, I just walked into a nearest mobile provider outlet (which happened to be Fido) and asked for a SIM with a prepaid plan. Put it into my Nokia myself (they didn't even see the phone, or asked for it), and that's it.

Well, perhaps I was just lucky that Fido was the nearest one?

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Its possible to fake IMEIs

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[jo42]

Don't tell them you have an iPhone. Go to a local Rogers Wireless store or kiosk and get a SIM card with voice and data plans. The only thing you won't get working is visual voicemail.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan is completely terrible in every way, though. There are no surprises there.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Yuuki Dasu]

It just makes you wonder why they need to do that, or why the government even cares about which payment plan you use for your wireless phone. Generally speaking, the sale of a good or of a service goes like this: you give money, you receive good or service. To insert "government butts in and confirms your ID" between those two steps, there really should be a very good overriding reason explaining why this is absolutely necessary. Are there nations which have fallen apart and descended into anarchy because private citizens may be able to make anonymous telephone calls? That's about what it would take for this to have real merit.

A misconception has popped up in this thread because the GP and GGP didn't explain the whole register-at-city-hall thing.

If you live in Japan, you're going to be registered in a certain city. Citizens have their own system, which works a bit differently, but all foreigners on anything but a tourist visa have to register at city hall in the city they're living in. You do the paperwork, then in a few weeks receive an Alien Registration Card, which is government-issued ID that you are legally required to carry at all times (tourists and those waiting for their ARCs are required to carry their passports at all times). You can, and will, be stopped on the streets randomly by police to check your identity and make sure you're legal. Yes, Papers, please is alive and well in Japan.

In any case, this card is required to get a cell phone. You're not asking city hall's permission to get a cell phone, you're proving your legality, identity, and residence to the cell phone company. The same as all the other information, they're just taking it to fill every blank on the application.

That correction aside, getting a cell phone here is a nightmare. In fact, getting any utilities or services set up is a nightmare. The bureaucracy is far too entrenched. If you move here, expect to be without cell phone or home internet access for around a month. Also expect to be fingerprinted and have your picture taken upon entry. As a foreigner, there are a lot of things to deal with here.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I can confirm, Rogers is by far the worst company I have ever dealt with.

I'm a Rogers customer, bought a iPhone. 2 months into my 3 year contract I get a bill stating I used 200mb of BIS service (That's Blackberry service), and charged for it!

I called to *explain* that its impossible for me to even connect to RIM servers using an iPhone (How do I know this? because I worked at RIM for 5 years)
Took forever to try to explain to the *tech* experts on the phone that this wasn't possible.
In the end they said I needed to upgrade my plan to fix it - *uh huh*.
I said fix it or its breach of contract and I'm keeping my iPhone.
They finally caved but its been months of hell.
For the last 5 months I've been overcharged, and each month I have to call it to get them to credit my account.

CRTC needs to look at these clowns...

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Max von H.]

It seems to be the worst country when it comes to vendor lock-in (firmware branding, sim locking), long contracts, high costs and craptastic prepaid packages. The one GSM network they have there (Rogers) is only GSM by technology, they use IMEI numbers to make sure people are using the right branded device for the data plan they're on. In any country where there is no CDMA that shit wouldn't fly, of course the Gubmint there don't feel like doing anything about it.

This is BS.

I moved to Canada 18 months ago and got a Rogers SIM card that I just popped into my unlocked european phone and it worked. I eventually changed over to Fido for a better plan (no contract) and bought an unlocked phone, no worries. You can get prepaid SIM cards basically anywhere and they'll never, ever ask for the IMEI.

If you only need a cheap prepaid, I recomment Speakeasy that's sold by 7-11. Credit lasts for 1 year and you can get a nearly free phone if needed.

I do agree that the cell phone market in Canada totally sucks and blows. Bell is hell, I had the misfortune of dealing with them and they're the absolute worst company I've ever dealt with. Rogers is a pain to deal with, but they do deliver on the product in a more satisfactory way than Bell or Telus.

Now there's a thing to take into account: the sheer size of the territory. Canada's HUGE. Maps don't do justice to its immensity, only second to Russia. I would think that installing and maintaining such a huge network to cover such a small population does have a rather high cost... but that's no excuse for the ways those companies gouge us!

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Also expect to be fingerprinted and have your picture taken upon entry.

Which country are you talking about?

It's ironic that the only time I've ever had my fingerprints taken was when entering the 'land of the free'

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[agnosticnixie]

80% of the population lives in four dense areas (the Saint-Lawrence delta and the south East of Quebec, Greater Edmonton, Vancouver-Victoria and Southern Ontario). They don't even pretend to have coverage in Quebec outside of a few urban areas if you leave the Saint-Lawrence valley or the south.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Midnight Thunder]

Well, perhaps I was just lucky that Fido was the nearest one?

Chances are you acted as if you knew what you were doing. I have an iPhone on the Fido network. The phone was given to me by a 'gadget-holic' friend who upgraded to the next model and I spent a while trying negotiate an acceptable plan (they even wanted to charge me $100 to move from my previous plan to the 'iPhone friendly' data plan), but I gave up after getting no where and just told them I would stick with my current plan and use wi-fi. Since then I have been doing exactly that. I am not going to reward a company any more than I have to. I would have considered switching network, but Rogers is essentially the same company as for the competition, well none of them offer GSM.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[ceoyoyo]

If you can get away with not showing them your phone, then by all means, go for it. They will often refuse to sell you service unless you pony up a phone for them to look at though, and I don't know of any law that requires them to give you a SIM card.

Certainly, if you have a spare phone kicking around, go for it.

My suggestion was a practical one, assuming the poster was more interested in getting wireless service than making a political statement.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

can i get with verizon with a P.O. box in Vermont or something? even with the exchange rate this beats Rog and Bog. (rogers and bell).

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[quacking duck]

Though technically the same company, Fido has several advantages over their parent company:

- per-second billing instead of rounding up to the next minute
- for free weeknight/weekend plans, free periods start at 7pm instead of outrageous 9pm.
- no $7 "system access fee"

The only disadvantages compared to Rogers were that their normal data plans weren't as generous (though they had the $30/6 GB plan at the same time Rogers did), and there aren't as many voice plan deals like My5.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[quacking duck]

Now there's a thing to take into account: the sheer size of the territory. Canada's HUGE. Maps don't do justice to its immensity, only second to Russia. I would think that installing and maintaining such a huge network to cover such a small population does have a rather high cost... but that's no excuse for the ways those companies gouge us!

That excuse only gets them so far. Australia is also immense but its population density is even less than Canada (3.2 people per km^2 vs 2.6/km^2). Like Canada, large areas of the country don't have coverage, yet their cell provider service is far superior.

Re:I'd hate to own a mobile phone in Canada

[Bent Spoke]

Another big problem with Rogers is that casual
users are coerced into paying ~$40/mo, even if
they make no calls. If you do make calls,
"additional charges" just seem to appear
and the liability is scary.

Oh sure Pay-As-You go is offered, however:

  - You pay .40 per minute.
  - Top-ups typically expire after 30 days
  - No way can you setup auto topping-up
  - Top-up via the web fails 9 out of 10 times

Partial workarounds can sometimes be found,
but most users give up and just pay the cell tax.

BTW: I switch to 7-11 speakout (which is over Rogers GSM)
and pay .20 per minute, where all topups last a year.

If they were serious

[Atrox666]

If they were serious about consumer protection they'd just pass a law that requires full clear standardized disclosure of pricing.
Failure should result in fines that have significant impact on shareholder value and should be grounds for terminating a contract.

Re:If they were serious

[txoof]

And nothing was lost

While this sounds like dishonest shenanigans on the part of the cellphone companies, I doubt it would have changed anything. Consumers are not the brightest bunch out there. As an aggregate group, we make some pretty stupid decisions based very little on long-term costs. Evidence the SUV. Many millions of (mostly) useless, overpowered, gas guzzling and expensive-to maintain sport futility vehicles were sold in the US, Canada and Australia over the past few years. Until oil hit $100/barrel, people were still buying them even though common sense could easily tell you that owning a giant gas-guzzler didn't make any sense. Similarly, people will flock to the carrier that offers the hand-held that they want, or a particular feature that they find desirable. The masses are generally willing enter into contracts to pay subsidization fees for handsets indefinitely, even after the handset is well paid for (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.). We also seem to be quite willing to pay $0.20 for text messages even though it has been publicly known for years that the messages are next to free for the companies to provide. If people cared about that, they would all be using Boost Mobile's unlimited plans.

In short, it's not the price of plans that attracts users to particular companies, it's the devices and services. It's odd, uneconomical behavior, but it's what people do. No amount of government web pages are going to change that. Until consumers actually start feeling a pinch in their wallet will they move to the more economical choice and start running the numbers and looking at the MPGs as it were.

Re:If they were serious

[Nemyst]

Wait, the Canadian government actually doing something that does not advantage large corporations? Are you serious?

Re:If they were serious

[TubeSteak]

We also seem to be quite willing to pay $0.20 for text messages even though it has been publicly known for years that the messages are next to free for the companies to provide.

And what generally happens to free services?
Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

In short, it's not the price of plans that attracts users to particular companies, it's the devices and services.

[Citation Needed]
Talking down the intelligence of the consumer and then appealing to common sense is not a substitute for statistical data.

Re:If they were serious

[Anonymous Coward]

A reasonable price for a text is probably around $0.001 or $0.0001 or so.

Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[4D6963]

Can we find the algorithm of this calculator anywhere and Streisand Effect it?

Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

Can we find the algorithm of this calculator anywhere and Streisand Effect it?

The calculator (as designed) relies on the cellcos to provide and maintain current pricing data. It will only work with the weight of government regulation behind it to force them to do so.

Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[stephanruby]

According to an Industry Canada spokesperson, "technical limitations" were to blame.

The quote above is the "official" reason the project was canceled, and for once, only this once I promise, I believe the official line. This kind of project has been tried before by many-many people. As a software project alone, without the support of some strong coercive governmental standardization laws, it's a huge and an almost impossible undertaking.

Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[Animaether]

it's a huge and an almost impossible undertaking.

Out of curiosity - why is that?

I realize that finding where that information is stored, listing it, keeping it up to date (a script could notify you of plan changes on the page, though), etc. is a big initial undertaking, but after that...?

In fact.. presuming this site has all the plans listed accurately...
http://www.cellphones.ca/cell-plans/ ...what's to stop them*, or anybody, from taking that data and making a calculator? Or better, the service mentioned in another comment ( http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1359639&cid=29331273 ) where you can enter your last bill's details (if you get a nice detailed bill) and out pops a recommendation of what provider you should go with.. at least in terms of $$$.

( * theoretically, the providers should stop -them- by no longer supplying the data... if in fact the maintainers of that site get the data from the providers )

Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[VoltageX]

Couldn't someone screen scrape the required data?
Like this - http://www.mobilechoice.com.au/compare-cap-plans-spreadsheet

Re:Can we haz Streisand Effect plox?

[stephanruby]

In the US, the problem is standardization. And looking at the link of the plans you provided for Canada, it seems Canada is suffering from a similar problem as well (thought, my examples are going to be from the American market because that's the one I'm most familiar with).

In the US, when someone says night time minutes, or anytime minutes, it doesn't mean anything standard. One company's interpretation of night time minutes is anything after 6 pm, another one might be anything after 9 pm, and a third one might be anything after 10 pm (and the worst part is that a company's interpretation keeps on changing over time). And then, you have plans that include an arbitrary number of friends, mobile-to-mobile calls, voice mail/no voice mail/voice mail limited in some arbitrary way, etc. Which brings me to the way minutes or seconds are rounded up, some round at the second only (I think Nextel used to do that), some round every five seconds, some round at every 30 seconds, etc.

Same goes with data connection charges, sometimes companies charge per message, per kb, and/or per page downloaded. And forget about it when they say it's unlimited, MetroPCS provided me with an unlimited everything data plan (which I appreciated, MetroPCS is actually one of the better companies around), but it kept on disconnecting me between every two to four web page reloads (I'm now on T-Mobile by the way).

And don't get me started on locked cell phones, I have an unlocked Nokia E71 (it's technically an American edition, it's the E71-2), a friend of mine has an E71 (it's technically an E71-x American AT&T -- basically he's fucked edition). The two phones look basically identical, I'm good, but my friend is basically fucked.

And then of course, you have the difference between what's advertised and what's actually provided. Billing errors and service plan errors are way too common these days, especially if you're with AT&T apparently. And what I am describing is just the tip of the iceberg. The cell phone market in the US is a huge mess, it's very confusing, and that's just the way cell phone providers like it I think.

Futile Attempt Anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

It's absolutely impossible to calculate, especially pre-calculate phone bills. Even attempting this was doomed to failure.

Who's your Daddy?

[unlametheweak]

'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"

That would only make sense if the government (the Conservative Party) weren't neoconservative. They aren't going to stick it to their main constituents; the business lobby and their sycophants. Of course, in these type of observations their will be neoconservatives claiming that the Conservative Party isn't Right Wing.

Don't need it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs a bogus calculator? It is very simple to me, nobody in this once progressive country offers a product that comes even close to what I'd want in a cell service. Getting me the dirty details makes no difference. I already know enough to make my decision. I'm in the high tech industry but I haven't had a cell phone for over five years and don't see a time where I'll change my mind. There's a reason why Canada has a lower penetration rate, it simply sucks rocks on all counts. But is apparently good enough enough to make the providers happy. Screw people like me that choose not to fall for the craptastic industry.

Some comments on the Norwegian version

[kroyd]

Since 2002 the "Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority" has had a calculator offering much of the same for the Norwegian market. In addition to mobile phones it also covers telephony and broadband. Basically, all providers are required by law to provide their pricing structures to the authority, so that the services can be compared. For mobile phones this will involve entering your typical number of minutes (to other mobile phones and landlines), text messages, mms messages and kilobytes.

I'm sure someone will moan that this is socialism, since it is a service that could be offered by the market, or that people could do themselves, or that services such as this can never be efficient anyway. There are some arguments against this: The Norwegian market is small (4.5 million people), with lots of mountains and a low population density, and strict rules about required coverage by the licensees. Manpower is also extremely expensive, and most workers are members of a union. So, clearly, Norway should have really high prices, right?

Wrong - according to the calculator my mobile phone costs should be about 0,- every month, with a 0,- establishment fee for the contract. (About 100 outgoing text messages, 100 minutes outgoing, and 1mb. No mms messages)

Why is this? It is of course hard to find the "perfect truth", but here are some informed guesses: The market is very regulated, in order to enforce competition. Perhaps the most important (to the consumer) point of this is that you can move your phone number to any other operator, either for free or for some very small cost. While there are only three GSM licensees there are 16 or so "virtual operators", who operate by putting a box inside the switches of the GSM licensees, and basically resell their bandwidth. The authority is also able to punish any collusion between the operators, and to require changes in price structures between the operators.

Clearly, all this (regulated) competition is good for the Norwegian consumer, but is it good for the telecom companies? The biggest Norwegian operator (Telenor) has according to wikipedia 143 million subscribers, so clearly all this competition does something to the companies, which can't be all bad. Telenor used to be a state-owned monopoly, which was well known for being hugely inefficient and slow. In markets where there can only be a limited number of providers (such as bandwidth in the GSM bands) there is no natural encouragement for companies to become more efficient, if you want to make more money it is easy to just add another hidden fee. Only by allowing for virtual operators and implementing the pricing calculator the benefits of having a market was realized.

(The same system was implemented for electrical power providers, but it failed for the banking system - allowing people to move their account numbers between banks was evidently too expensive..)

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[xaxa]

The same system ... failed for the banking system - allowing people to move their account numbers between banks was evidently too expensive..)

The UK banks won't let you keep your account number (the first half [sort code] identifies the bank, I assume they don't want to lose this convenience) but when you open a new account they'll offer to transfer over any direct debits, inform your employer for you and so on. (NatWest's explanation of this.) I assume they offer this to try and attract new customers.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[radtea]

Only by allowing for virtual operators and implementing the pricing calculator the benefits of having a market was realized.

This is an excellent example of the so-called "Second Best Theorem" in economics, which is a proof that the Frist Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics is completely useless as a policy tool, because an arbitrarily small deviation from ideal premises can result in an arbitrarily large deviation from ideal (Pareto optimal) outcomes.

This means that the claim in the above-liked Wikipedia article that, "The theorem supports a case for non-intervention in ideal conditions: let the markets do the work and the outcome will be Pareto efficient" is utterly irrelevant to the real-world of policy, because ideal conditions are never realized, and ANY deviation from them can produce arbitrarily perverse outcomes (and not on a good way.)

Well-designed markets with entry conditions and regulations designed to deal with empirically known issues with an unregulated market in the same goods are the appropriate tool for achieving something that is as close as possible to Pareto optimal RESULTS. Instead, free-market ideologues, anti-empiricist to the last, insist on looking only at CONDITIONS, and attacking any attempt to examine RESULTS. This lets them game the non-idealities while claiming the purity of theory, whereas in fact they are just a bunch of dishonest, ignorant sociopaths.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[Zerth]

There are some arguments against this: The Norwegian market is small (4.5 million people),

The biggest Norwegian operator (Telenor) has according to wikipedia 143 million subscribers

.

Does Norway have a lot of visitors, a very interesting phone/person ratio, or does Telenor provides service outside the country?

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not socialism. You're not taking anything from anyone. It's a fine idea and an adequate use of government money. Yes, I'm a right wing nutjob and government medicine has already damn near killed me once. However, a regulatory agency publishing information is not "socialism".

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[kroyd]

There are some arguments against this: The Norwegian market is small (4.5 million people),

The biggest Norwegian operator (Telenor) has according to wikipedia 143 million subscribers

.

Does Norway have a lot of visitors, a very interesting phone/person ratio, or does Telenor provides service outside the country?

Telenor operates over much of Europe and Asia these days, through subsidiaries and such.

My point was just that enforcing competition is a good thing in the long term, even if the companies involved will complain a lot in the short term. The operators complained a lot when the reforms were implemented, but I don't think they would have been where they are today without being kicked away from their complacent near-monopoly status. Both the companies involved and the consumers (citizens) made a profit from the reforms. IMHO the same would have been true for the banking industry, even if they would have had to hire a lot of cobol programmers to implement bank account portability :P

I forgot to mention the website, it is http://www.telepriser.no./ Oh, and a more accessible site (English, worldwide) is http://www.yr.no/ probably the best weather forecast site on the net.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the calculator clearly doesn't work.

It assumes that your mobile phone costs should be 0 when your usage is not 0.

Additionally, the reason Norway has lower prices than you might expect is because Norway has extremely high taxes. In addition to tax rates that can be higher than in the US for individual income (up to 47%), they also have 25% VAT on items other than food, drink, and transportation.

Someone making (and spending ) 100k in the US will get to use between 46-84k depending on tax bracket, whereas someone in Norway will get 14-61k depending on tax bracket. In other word, the US average, assuming equally wieghted tax rates by population (which it isnt, its skewed more towards lower tax brackets) is higher than the most that could be personally used in Norway. That isn't moaning that Norway has socialism, its because Norway is a more socialist country. Its also not that Norway should have really high prices, its that effectively, Norway does have really high prices.

Finally, in an oligopoly in a free market, you can't make more money by adding a hidden fee. Consumers will recognize that your prices are higher, and switch to the lower cost provider who gives the same level of (crappy) service. There are 2 interesting qualities of an oligopoly - if you raise prices, no one else will. If you lower prices, everyone else who can will. Therefore, oligopolies tend not to compete on price. The only incentive to make an oligopoly compete on price is governmental regulation. This is, by definition, a bad thing for a free market.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[hankwang]

It assumes that your mobile phone costs should be 0 when your usage is not 0.

I was recently in Norway and had to get a temporary phone due to problems with my own phone. I can attest that I got a plan that would let me call for free to other customers of the same operator. Of course, phone calls to landlines and other operators were not for free. I think I ended up paying €60 for a prepaid phone including an hour's worth of international calls within Europe.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[belmolis]

Don't forget all the elves and trolls. They probably use cell phones too.

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[IgnoramusMaximus]

That is a way of putting it which brings warmth to my heart. I only wish that people with your insight were the majority, instead of a tiny fraction of a percentile of society... perhaps then reason, logic, empirical evidence and the scientific method would be a norm, instead of being treated as the red-headed bastard child of a chamber-maid at a feast of its arrogantly, pridefully ignorant, gleefully sociopathic, insanely greedy, diseased with delusional, self-serving "religions", violently aggressive and generally utterly irrational "betters".

Re:Some comments on the Norwegian version

[shutdown -p now]

Additionally, the reason Norway has lower prices than you might expect is because Norway has extremely high taxes. In addition to tax rates that can be higher than in the US for individual income (up to 47%), they also have 25% VAT on items other than food, drink, and transportation.

This is only relevant if the government (i.e. effectively those high taxes) subsidizes mobile phone providers. I'm not a Norwegian, so I do not know, but I strongly suspect that it doesn't, and the taxes simply go towards better socialized healthcare, unemployment benefits, etc.

Price display through laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Here (Norway) almost all phones can be purchased without a service contract. Even so there are many offerings for cheap phones on contract. Ads for these offers are required by law to show the minimum total amount you have to pay. You can get an iPhone for $65, but the offer still says "total price: $540."

Re:Price display through laws

[Sheen]

I'm norwegian aswell, we have this calculator ( run by the state ), which works with interwebs and power aswell, and im sure allot of other things i havnt had the need for. You can buy -all- phones without contracts, -tis teh law!-

Re:Price display through laws

[Anonymous Coward]

That should have been "$840."

Consumer Rights Isn't

[AndGodSed]

When are people going to begin to realise that as far as consumers go there is no free market. Sure you can get a better deal at carrier B than carrier C but you will never get the BEST DEAL POSSIBLE because they don't want to give it to you. Profit is paramount, but these guys are really taking it too far.

Re:Consumer Rights Isn't

[kramerd]

When are people going to begin to realise that as far as consumers go there is no free market. Sure you can get a better deal at carrier B than carrier C but you will never get the BEST DEAL POSSIBLE because they don't want to give it to you. Profit is paramount, but these guys are really taking it too far.

That isnt what a free market means. A free market means that someone else could come along and be competitive, without government interference (ie, you dont have to bribe your way in, and there are not a limited number of competitors allowed). Over time, if there are differences in competitors, the best price will win, all other elements excluded. If there are quality differences, such that two competing products are not equivalent substitutes (you can't make a butter roll with margerine) the best price might not win because of end user utility.

If you can get a better deal at Carrier B than Carrier C, and no one else beats Carrier B, and then Carrier B is currently the best deal possible. They are giving it to you. A free market means that you are not prohibited from creating carrier D, offering a better deal than everyone else, and taking market share. Carrier B, of course, would then have the option of undercutting you. Its a risk you take because its a free market.

Try econ 101 again, and this time, read the book and listen to the professor, and think about how all the stuff you have been ignoring might work in the real world.

CUB Cell Phone Saver

[SrLnclt]

For those of us in the states, the Citizen Utility Board of Illinois (CUB) already has a calculator similar to this. Just upload a recent bill or two, and it will tell you what the cheapest plan is for you on each of the top carriers. http://www.citizensutilityboard.org/cellphonesaver.html

No leaks?

[Runaway1956]

No one with access to the code cares enough to post it to Wikileaks? Strange..... Does Canada execute whistle blowers or something? I always thought they were at least as free as the United States. Someone put it out there, and let it go viral. Screw the politicians. Better yet, hope they drown in the saunas and pools they build in their back yards with all that bribe money.

Re:No leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll get to it. It's just the line up at Tim's Drive thru is a bit slow.

Re:No leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

It may sound a little odd, but in Canada, our public service is wrather a-political. Advancement is merit based throughout the whole thing, and the only political supervision they have is a parrel BOD at the top. One of the reasons this arangement functions is that public servants are responsible for not fucking over politicians. Always be very nice, and don't contradict what the politicans say. They do it for all political parties, and the parties mainly keep their noses out of their bussiness. Some exceptions are made for clearly criminal activities, even then, unless it's particularly egregious, they will leave it to the media to do the digging. Whistleblowing is done mainly for in office. If you spot wasteful spending from your boss, there are (admitedly poor) protections for you to report it up then chain of command.

In exchange for watching the politicians backsides, the beaurocrats are given a non politicized job. If a career beaurocrat makes an unpopular decision, the minister in charge of the department (who has very little to do with it's actual operations) will accept all responsibility in the media and in parliment.

Re:No leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Canadian bureaucrat is a special breed of person ... Orwell spoke of their kind often while writing 1984. And our bureaucrats are world class too. They can discuss the benefits of keeping data and information from citizens WITH A CITIZEN, and are able to keep a straight face doing it. The trick is they actually believe it.

There is no leak because they wouldn't dream of hurting the machine that is THEIR government. Just ask our former Prime minister Mulrooney what happens when you fire a few of the extra pork barrelers. Twenty years latter they are STILL trying to hang him.

The sooner the world realizes Canada is controlled by fascists, liberal and conservatives alike, the sooner they can start treating us with the correct amount disdain.

Re:No leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

"fascists, liberal and conservatives"

Fantastic! The sooner the world realizes that all these supposed extremes in the current political system are in fact just different garnishes on the same rotten mutton the better.

Then we can have us a French Revolution. Only we can call it a "Freedom Revolution", and not do it for stupid jingiost motives.

Re:No leaks?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Then we can have us a French Revolution. Only we can call it a "Freedom Revolution", and not do it for stupid jingiost motives.

And would you like fries with that?

Re:No leaks?

[nostriluu]

Um, no... every time there is a government change, ministries get renamed, rearranged, budgets get slashed and rearranged. Haven't you heard the phrase "Canada's New Government?" Sounds a bit Orwellian.

Re:No leaks?

[jo42]

Contrary to popular belief, Tim Horton's is not coffee. It is brown coloured water that tastes strange - at best.

Re:No leaks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly, given the insane popularity of it, you must know better than everyone else. Why are you wasting your time here, you have crimes to solve!

Re:No leaks?

[SmegTheLight]

Obviously you are some kind of Starbucks wanker. You would probably drink toxic sludge if it had an Italian name, and was more then $5.

Coffee is brown coloured water that tastes strange. Doesn't mater where you get it.

Re:No leaks?

[fractoid]

No one with access to the code cares enough to post it to Wikileaks?

Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't seem that hard a project to write. It's basically a unit converter. The real unit of phone service is the minute-of-talk-time but they go through a smokescreen layer of dollars - you spend $X, you get $Y of credit, and somewhere in the fine print they charge you $Z per minute.

It should be easy enough to pump out an application where you can enter the plan cost per month, dollars of credit, call rates and so forth and have it spit out dollar-per-unit-service values. Have it save each entry and voila, a table of comparative plan value!

Re:No leaks?

[beingthebest]

It's September, everyone know us Canadians are recovering from out 3 days of summer.

Re:No leaks?

[quenda]

What's the point? There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how cellphone plans compare, they will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

Re:No leaks?

[stephanruby]

Did you hear that my fellow Americans? It sounds like they want us to go liberate them. We certainly could use the easy victory right now.

heh, title is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia Michael Geist would have been killed. So, I read the summary withholding my breath till the end.
So, no one was killed, just some service scrapped.
Sensationalistic titles kill me.

Re:heh, title is misleading

[spyrochaete]

In Soviet Russia is "Cell Phone Cost Calculator" a common name? For boys or girls?

Re:heh, title is misleading

[CharlyFoxtrot]

In Soviet Russia is "Cell Phone Cost Calculator" a common name? For boys or girls?

No that would be in South Africa: "Ever since mobile phone services were introduced in KwaZulu-Natal some parents have named their children after some of the terms used by mobile services providers." My favorite is (mr. ?) Pay as you go Mfeka.

bell curve

[Anonymous Coward]

While this sounds like dishonest shenanigans on the part of the cellphone companies, I doubt it would have changed anything. Consumers are not the brightest bunch out there.

Nothing against their dignity as human beings, but by definition half the population is on the left-hand side of the bell curve.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
      -- H. L. Mencken (I'm sure this is true regardless of country)

Not quite true. Try 7-11

[T0t0r0_fan]

It seems to be the worst country when it comes to vendor lock-in (firmware branding, sim locking), long contracts, high costs and craptastic prepaid packages.

Actually... I'm not sure if there's a place where most of that isn't true. Japan, in particular, fits all of the above quite nicely (difference, of course, being the service quality).

Anyway, there is, in fact, a fairly decent prepaid provider in Canada - Speakout, branded by 7-11, and also Petrocanada, running on Rogers' network. The price per minute is high, but you can keep the credit for a year (depending on the amount, actually), and with frequent promotions you might even get a simple phone for free/cheap with around $50-100 credit.

Also, don't have much experience with Rogers directly (and even that is mostly negative), but I was able to get a Fido prepaid SIM card from a store without any issues or extra questions. The numerous billing/voicemail/etc. issues made me give up after two months, though...

Everythings a game! Taxes and health care too!

[TheNarrator]

It seems that more and more everything in American Capitalism and it's "light" version : Canadian Capitalism is a game. There's the credit card game, the investing game, the phone bill game, the health care game, the tax system game. Everywhere there are these ridiculously complex games that are used to confuse and bilk people out of all their money. Mainly it hurts people who don't have the time, don't have the wits-- or in the case of the super complicated games like the tax game-- don't have the money to hire professional game players (lawyers, accountants) to help them win.

Re:Everythings a game! Taxes and health care too!

[Anonymous Coward]

like brian mulroney only paying taxes on half the the money he received from karl heinz schreiber and years after the fact

Canada's other (comercial) cell calculator

[delineate]

I'm hesitant to say this 'cause I know ./ is going to crash it, But there's actually a privately developed calculator in beta right now.

cellplanexpert.ca

It's a work in progress and txting+data is yet to come, but otherwise it's very comprehensive. You can get a feel for how complicated plans actually are in Canada (if you care to actually research) from the long questionnaire process.

The big problem in Canada is that in most provinces, there are only 2 independent networks Rogers (GSM) and "Belus" (Bell in Ontario & Quebec + Telus in BC and Alberta - the two are co-dependant on each other's network -CDMA variants). So providers and all their various subsidiaries compete on who can best obfuscate the highest prices, not who can lower them the most. This means there are a plethora of options, features, hidden rates and costs to wade through. This might change if the new carriers emerging from the recent spectrum auction actuall stay independent, and are not bought out by the big players like the last round. In provinces where there's even 3 independent players (Saskatchewan, Manitoba) it's significantly more competitive.

Full disclaimer - it's my site.

Re:Canada's other (comercial) cell calculator

[senor_burt]

I'm going through the Rogers hassle now - I loathe dealing with them, but with the iPhone, they're the only game in town. I tried your calculator - very interesting, it really nails down the intense confusion the carriers play on to determine costs.

I run Vnet's iSip - a sip soft phone on the iPhone, which turns my iPhone into an extension on my PBX. Unfortunately, you need to jailbreak the iPhone if you're planning to use it to answer calls (I used to do this pre 3.0, now I just ring multiple devices, including the iPhone and hope for the best).

My5 with the PBX (with PBX-forwarding to my mobile number) and backdoor outbound dialing mean that my phone bills for outgoing calls is much lower than it otherwise should be (I'm still hovering around the $130/month mark including data, and feeling very ripped off).

The questionnaire process is very long, as you warned... and I'm sure results may vary. It was enlightening to see the results - but without data and without phone-specifics (e.g., iPhone only runs on Rogers), it limits the utility to me. That said, I'm sending all my fellow Canucks to your site. It may let them have a fighting chance, at the very least.

Re:Canada's other (comercial) cell calculator

[delineate]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll have to make it more obvious that you can jump ahead to the results early - everything is optional except the location and the number of airtime minutes. The rest of it is so we can go the extra mile and find the optimal option/feature combinations that make each plan the cheapest for your particular situation. Something I doubt the other sites mentioned can do well, if at all. I've a background in IC CAD tool design and optimization, and this is definitely one of those NP hard, "intractable" class of problems. Unfortunately, there's no way around the fact that the calculator's optimization results are proportional to one's effort in creating the profile. Really though, is it much worse or more time than dealing with sales representatives?

I'll be getting to txting, data, smartphone plans and the like soon. The hard part is making sure my solution can accommodate all the crazy ways data & txting are packaged and billed throughout the country. Sigh...

Make one for the US

[forrie]

I would love to see one of these for the United States cell territories.

Canada

[AnAdventurer]

Everyone thinks Canada is our nice neighbors to the north (if they happen to be American). BUT they have a pretty corrupt government run heavily on business interests. For example it is illegal to photograph or even view baby seals being killed for fur (I wish I was making that up; check out Sea Shepherd for more) unless you have a license to kill seals. Laws like that make the scenario in the parent story entirely likely.

Slashdot Surreality

[MSTCrow5429]

There is something surreal about a post putatively defending "consumers" from cell phone companies, when those consumers are being forced at the threat of gunpoint to fund a "cell phone cost calculator," while on the other hand their interactions with cell phone companies are entirely voluntarily.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[AK Marc]

Intresting rant. However, from my knowledge of the regulatory organizations I've dealt with, it's a lie. Ever see the "regulatory fees" tacked on your bills? In many cases, the regulatory organizations are self-funding. So this would be funded with a contract between the phone companies and the state. The phone companies voluntarily entered into a contract with a state that required them to fund the orgaization that provides oversight. And this was to be a product of one of those oversight organizations. So if you are going to claim robery at gunpoint, you'll have to do more than assert it.

Oh, and I don't have voluntary interactions with the cell companies. They are using a finite public resource to bombard me with radiation. Whether I am a customer or not, they are using resources that have been declared to be owned by me (The People), and thus are responsible to me whether or not I'm a customer. So I'm curious about what you consider voluntary, since I have no way to opt out of receiving their signals without great expense on my part, and pretty much nothing will let me legally use the spectrum allocated to them. So what of that is "voluntary"?

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[evilviper]

those consumers are being forced at the threat of gunpoint to fund a "cell phone cost calculator,"

I doubt anyone will come after you with guns drawn for failure to pay $1 of the taxes you owe.

interactions with cell phone companies are entirely voluntarily.

Phone service is a modern necessity. Not necessarily cell phones, but I've found that cell phones are, in fact, cheaper than their wired counterparts, so it's a moot point.

So, saving a program which helps people select a lower-cost phone service plan, would in fact benefit all, which is in fact exactly what taxes are for.

The benefit of the majority is well worth a small financial loss for the individual. In the end, the small benefits to all add up to large benefits to all individuals.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[shutdown -p now]

There is something surreal about a post putatively defending "consumers" from cell phone companies, when those consumers are being forced at the threat of gunpoint to fund a "cell phone cost calculator," while on the other hand their interactions with cell phone companies are entirely voluntarily.

There's something surreal about a libertarian complaining about how some tiny amount of tax money goes towards funding a project that is clearly beneficial to every person in the country using a cell phone (which is what, 99.9% of the adult population?), and also happens to reduce the likelihood of companies engaging in anti-competitive behavior (such as customer lock-in), that they are widely accused of, in an essentially free market way - that of customer having all information to be able to make the rational decision of voting with one's wallet.

Actually, sorry, no. Nothing surreal about it, unfortunately, it's a sight that's way too common.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh you're a richie conservative who doesnt want to fund more critical services for Canadians. Boooo whoooo! So you won't get those solid gold rims for your BMW.

Interaction with cell phone companies is a must. Most people need a cell phone, they are very handy things to have if used properly.

The problem is that EVERY cell phone company is corrupt in Canada.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[Andrew Cady]

Why pay good money to inform consumers when one can assume "perfect information" as a premise, for free?

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[MSTCrow5429]

In many cases, the regulatory organizations are self-funding. So this would be funded with a contract between the phone companies and the state. The phone companies voluntarily entered into a contract with a state that required them to fund the orgaization that provides oversight.

A regulatory organization cannot be self-funding, at least in the sense that a private corporation is self-funding. While the phone companies may have entered into a contract with the State to operate, this was not entered into freely and voluntarily. The State requires that the phone companies turn over the fruits of the labor to the State, or else face violent reprisals. That is no more voluntarily than if the local mafia allows you to run your cell phone store in the neighborhood, but only as long as you pay protection money for their "services."

They are using a finite public resource to bombard me with radiation. I have no way to opt out of receiving their signals without great expense on my part.

Tin foil hat? Or peculiar humor?

they are using resources that have been declared to be owned by me (The People). Pretty much nothing will let me legally use the spectrum allocated to them [the phone companies].

Doesn't sound like you own anything, despite the proclamations of the State. Another transparent shell game. Anything that is supposedly owned by "the people" somehow always ends up meaning control, and effective ownership, by Le'Etat.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[MSTCrow5429]

Libertarianism is not a utilitarian philosophy; indeed, it rejects utilitarianism as immoral and violative of the fundamental rights of the individual. Libertarianism is predicated upon the non-aggression principle, which states that no individual may inflict violence against another, absent the exercise of the natural right of self-defense. Taxation is theft. It is the extortion of the fruits of ones labors, which per Locke, legitimately belongs only to the laboring individual. Taxation is parasitic, for it deprives the productive of their just earnings, and it operates through violence, or the threat thereof, for refusal to pay the State results in kidnapping, or worse. The libertarian does not object or withhold condemnation based upon the size of the crime. All true (non-victimless) crimes are evil, and all evil must be opposed, no matter how small or large.

What is anti-competitive about trying to prevent your customers from deciding to move to a competitor? That sounds pretty competitive, trying to keep your customers, while depriving your competition of the same. Now, customer lock-in is quite a nuisance, but the only thing you can't compete against, the State, does control the business environment in which the cell phone companies operate in. Having the State analyze the terms of a cell phone contract is a superficial distraction, a hide the ball parlor game to bamboozle the masses, narcotized by lullaby promises of government salvation. Acquiring the licenses, permits, etc. necessary to start a new cell phone company is quite expensive, and rather difficult. This is due to the State's regulatory apparatus. If true free-market competition is desired, so that a cell phone company that was annoying its customers by locking them in would immediately find itself going out of business as its customers flee to a multitude of other carriers with more liberal contracts, the answer is to kick the State out of the cell phone company arena.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[agnosticnixie]

Customer lock-in is a breach of the non-aggression principle.
Large properties, and plenty of corporations' existence is also a breach of the non-aggression principle, in the past and present.

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[AK Marc]

While the phone companies may have entered into a contract with the State to operate, this was not entered into freely and voluntarily.

You are broken. A consumer who has very limited choices because of the oligopoly of companies that conspire to fix prices and erect massive barriers of entry that wants the service would enter into the contract "freely and voluntarily" but a company that uses a public resource and has to deal with a regulatory agency of that resource is incapable of entering into that contract "freely and voluntarily"? Every time I point out that consumers don't have a free and voluntary choice, I'm always told "they could walk away." In this case, the companies could do the same.

The State requires that the phone companies turn over the fruits of the labor to the State, or else face violent reprisals.

The state requires that companies that lay their lines on private property be held responsible to the people whose property they are using. It's a trade for using public resources and what is essentially group licensing for private property. They can always choose to not accept the government's regulations by stopping operating in that location. They have as much free choice as the consumers in their service area.

Doesn't sound like you own anything,

I don't know your beliefs, but almost everyone I've run into who spouts statements like that believes that I own the debt, but not the assets of the government. What do you believe about my share of the debt?

Re:Slashdot Surreality

[MSTCrow5429]

What do you believe about my share of the debt?

The element of consent is the deciding factor. If one recognizes that the State is a despotic power that has incurred the debt in order to strengthen its regime and repress the population, then the debt is odious, and it belongs solely to the regime, and cannot legitimately be levied upon the people. On the other hand, if one supports or condones the State, they are themselves responsible for the actions of the State, even if only under dubious and discredited fictions, and they must shoulder the debt of their profligate rulers, their ultimate share of the debt being apportioned by their rulers' fancies.

Remember Folks!

[Relic of the Future]

Remember folks, in a perfect market, every actor has perfect, instant access to all the information about the market.

But somehow, YOU'RE the one who's "anti-market" if you want to see this service work.

Re:Remember Folks!

[mahsah]

What?

A market only assumes that people make rational decisions, not that they have perfect information.

Information is itself a "good".

Re:Remember Folks!

[mano.m]

OP is right. In a perfect market, people make rational decisions based on perfect market information and rational interpretation thereof.

Somebody else willl

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are not going to do it... somebody else will. Welcome MyPhoneBill.ca: http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/09/06/cell-phone-cost-calculator-killed-in-canada/

Send it to me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I'll host it and dare them to try and make me take it down.

Why is the government needed for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

The information about the different plans is probably public knowledge.
1. Build a website comparing the different offers.
2. Place some ads on this site
3. Profit.
Notice the absence of '...'.
I know of different sites that do this for mobiles, landlines, electrical power and so on.

Money grubbing ha-ores

[Anonymous Coward]

God sometimes I really hate capitalism.

Excel

[Nicolay77]

Why don't make it an excel (or other spreadsheet format) file, easily downloadable and distributable by anyone?

This way no stupid legislation or lobbying can block it.

Also... not everything has to be running on a server... are we getting a little shortsighted because of the web revolution?

Timmie's

[Anonymous Coward]

I am proud to say that I patronized a Tim Horton's at 96th & Broadway in the borough of Manhattan today.

It is part of Mike Bloomberg's Canadian Content initiative.

Good Services and Features

[iworktickets]

Provide the good services to customers, automatically may price can not effect it's user friendly features. Like iworktickets is simple to configure, simple to use application for smart phones. It replaces paper forms used by people in the field to collect data and record work done. www.iworktickets.com

re invade canada?

[avicho]

the last time the US tried to invade canada they ran away with their tails between their legs (1817?)

Re:ALL parties want bigger government

[avicho]

check out the "work less party" in Vancouver,, they are the real anarchists...it is a beautiful thing...remembering that anarchy does not mean violence