The Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is pondering a “national code” for wireless service that would give mobile users more of a definition of their wireless contracts and maybe more of a voice against the carriers.
As a result of the prospected national code, the CRTC recently opened a public forum where Canadians can get involved and have a say in what the code involves. So far Canadians have taken advantage of this forum, and have made their voices heard.
While there were many good responses out of the 1,043 submissions like “All phones should be sold unlocked” and “911, etc, must be included in advertised price” the most overwhelming and most liked was, that there should be no more 36 month contracts. Many Canadians have been calling for a ban of three-year contracts for quite some time, but this is the first real opportunity to speak their mind and have it heard.
Most major carriers in the US give you the opportunity to buy a phone at a discounted price every two years, but in Canada carriers lock up customers for three years. Many of the comments pointed to the US model and asked why they can’t have the same.
The CRTC seems to be taking the responses seriously as they sent out a tweet that thanked everyone that participated, and told them to come back on January 28, 2013 to vote on a draft, that will be an outline of the proposed changes to the rules.
With how fast mobile technology is progressing the idea of a three-year contract is just ridiculous. If US carriers had three-year contracts I’d still be using my Motorola Droid 2 running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) instead of my Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.2 (Jellybean). I would hate to still be using a Gingerbread device, with how far Android has come, just because my contract had another year left.
Hopefully our neighbors to the North will get their way and be rid of three-year contracts. Do you think it would be a good idea for the CRTC to put an end to three-year contracts?