Rogers is shifting up the wireless mobile landscape once again by announcing that on February 11, its Quebec Share Everything, Share Everything + and Non-Share plans will get the same $5 a month increase that Rogers already spread across the rest of the country. Rogers, Canada’s largest carrier raised their rates for everybody except in Quebec and many thought there would be a reprieve for the province – but no deal. While Rogers was one of the first to raise their rates, Bell, Telus and SaskTel quickly followed. Quebec-based Videotron took a different route and did not directly raise prices, but dropped the amount of data for each plan. For instance, the $74.95 plan only offers 3GB of data, which is down from 4GB and the $84.95 plan went from 6GB to 5GB. If you do not use all of your data each month, then it may not affect you too much.
It was only less than a week ago that Rogers closed out Q4 2015 in what Chief Executive Officer of Rogers Communications, Guy Laurence called the new competition “the new normal” playing field and that new aggressiveness between Rogers, Telus and Bell “reached new levels in December and [will] continue that way.” He said, “Overall, we delivered steady results in a fiercely competitive quarter, including strong results in Wireless and Internet, where we maintained momentum in subscriber and financial metrics…” All of the telecoms have blamed the weakening Canadian Dollar and exchange rates as the main reason for the price increases as the Big Three battle it out for subscribers, sales revenue and profits.
With Rogers new price hikes, subscribers that want to sign up with the Share Everything + Plan with data bucket options of 4GB, 6GB, 10GB or 14GB will see a $5 a month increase. This means a $65 starting price on the No Tab option and rising to $110 with the 14GB Share Everything + Plan. In Quebec, the Non-Share Plan with 500MB of data will bump up to $52 a month and the 1GB Smart Tab Plan will cost $60 per month. The largest increase is to the Quebec Non-Share No Tab Plan where the cost will go up $10.50 to $60 a month.