For an additional 10$ per month, Bell Mobility customers can now get unlimited calls to AND from Bell mobility cell phones, residential and business phones. Of course, we are talking about local calls here.
We will have to watch what Rogers Wireless (and Fido), Telus, and even Videotron will have to offer. The offer is ground-breaking, at least here in Québec and Canada. I know that European and US mobile carriers have been offering similar plans at the beginning of the decade. Bouygues Télécom in France offered for example unlimited calls to ANY french phone in 2001, for as low as 45 Euros. Here, you would be happy to get 300 local minutes with that. And of course, you will be charged extra fees, and get other arbritrary phone setups from your operator, such as Telus disabling wifi on HTC 6700 phones so that you wouldn’t use skype in a hotspot.
Hopefully, the CRTC and other governement agencies are opening up the market. If one carrier plays his cards right, he could offer highly competitive plans that will shake up the current market. And I am quite sure that’s what videotron is currently doing. Because when you think about it, a phone call has virtually 0 marginal cost for a telecom operator. They will charge you with customer acquisition costs, customer support, and network maintenance.
