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

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.

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.