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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.'"
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
Can we find the algorithm of this calculator anywhere and Streisand Effect it?
You just got troll'd!
'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.
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..)
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.
It's corporatism, actually. Fascism goes a bit further with the State.
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:
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
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"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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 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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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!-
"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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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)
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
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.
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But somehow, YOU'RE the one who's "anti-market" if you want to see this service work.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
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:
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein