Canada’s largest telecom prices have gone up today – Rogers and the rest of the Big Three raised their base rates by $5 per month on its share plans. By their actions, Roger essentially eliminated any BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) benefit for new customers that sign up or current customers that want to switch plans. With changes made in pricing, BYOD means that those customers will pay the same as a “Smart Tab” plan that offers a smaller subsidy than those customers that buy their device through Rogers and receive the “Premium Tab” pricing that is much better.
Our friends at MobileSyrup obtained some internal documents from Rogers that shows a heavily promoted plan called “Limited-time No Tab 5GB Local Calling Plan” will escape the price hike until Sunday, February 7. The plan will currently cost you $90 a month, but will go up to $100 a month for new customers on February 7. Rogers also notes that for the time being, existing customers can add additional lines to their accounts at the same price when they activated their accounts. This would breakdown to a $5 to $10 savings a month per line. New subscribers will pay $55 a month for BYOD or Smart Tab lines, while Premium Tab customers will pay $65 a month to share data.
What is so amazing is Rogers’ response as to why they are raising prices and even more amazing that they expect people to believe their reasoning. Rogers claims they are raising the cost because, “We want our customers to all benefit from having the latest and greatest phones while taking advantage of our value added services like Roam Like Home, Rogers Game Centre Live, and their choice of Spotify, Shomi, or Texture by Next Issue by signing up on a 2 year Share Everything plan.” So by forcing subscribers to sign up on a two-year plan they can take better advantage to all of the additional services that Rogers offers – all of which cost extra money. They just do not want subscribers to miss those valuable incentives.
Canadians will see many share plans adjusted during January and February and it will not matter whether you are using Rogers, Telus or Bell as they have all gone up.