But sadly, great phones these are not. The price cut could be sign of competition heating up in the low end (thanks Wind) or it could be a sign of something better. Last decade’s crap talk-and-text-CDMA have got to go. Koodo has yet to launch any HSPA devices, let’s hope this cut is them taking out the trash in preparation for launching something better.

The mobile industry needs right now more creative financing options for making smart(er) phones financially accessible to a greater number of Canadians.

• From zero to not one, not two but 4 (and soon to be more) national 3.5G HSPA GSM-standard networks in Canada
• New price plans from Wind, DAVE and Public shaking up the landscape.
• Fiercer competition between the major carriers now that they are all on the same network technology with all the same devices
• FAST 3G networks at 21MBs (and 4 of em!) that’s faster than any 3g network in the US
• Suddenly great deals on rocket sticks everywhere. And tethering that works and portable hotspots and other fun things.
• ATT&T is not in Canada, count your lucky stars
• Unlike on ATT&T, a 30% rate of call dropping New York or 100% anytime at SXSW in Austin, is not considered normal
• Not one but 3 choices of carrier for the iPhone, and more choices for the latest Androids and Blackberries
• Number portability, at last it was mandated and it gives consumers more power to switch
• Wireless penetration rates rising rapidly, and the appetite for smartphones by consumers that is taking even the carriers by surprise
• SIM cards on every network. (the market for unlocked phones is coming to Canada). Just wait for the Google phone store to get to Canada, unraveling the relationship between carriers and devices, sometime this year we can hope. And if we ever get Google voice, be ready for the perfect storm of telco disruption.
• And skype is starting to work well on mobiles, just to turn the screws on the legacy telcos a little more

If I were a carrier, I’d be a little stressed out by this heightened level of competition in the sleepy old wireless north (aka Canada). For anyone else working with mobile, it’s a great time to be Canadian. Call it pent up demand, leap-frogging, or sweet redemption for years spent at the back of the pack, but suddenly Canada is looking good at wireless. Expect big things this decade.

Agree, disagree or flame away.

What strikes me is that Canadian wireless carriers are mainly looking at each other in search of best practices. The iPhone offerings, for example, are almost identical between the three carriers, with identical handset pricing and only slight variances in the plans and contract durations. Most of the plan differences are in the small print hardly picked up by the average consumer, and the minutes and SMS included in the different plans vary only slightly. In terms of contract duration, all carriers offer a 3-year contract term and only Telus also a 0-year option. Nobody offers a 1- or 2-year option while I’m sure there is a market for it: Many frequent iPhone users will want to replace their phone much earlier than after 3 years – and I think most of the early iPhone adoptors will agree with this.

Compare with Europe. Most European carriers have the policy of “higher value customer equals higher handset subsidy”, meaning that both the duration of the contract and the level of monthly commitment determine the subsidy and thus the price of the handset at sign-up. Canadian carriers only vary the subsidy with contract duration and do not reward customers for committing to a higher monthly fee: If you sign up for a 2-year contract it doesn’t matter if you take a $50 plan or a $100 plan, you pay the same for your handset even though your “customer lifetime value” might be twice as high. The difference in the total 2-year commitment in this case is $1200, a number that dwarfs the maximum subsidy levels of around $500 that I see in the market.

The first carrier to break this cycle will be a winner: they will be able to attract the high-value customers by offering them lower handset prices, while improving profitability at the same time. Research in Europe suggests that for most consumers consumers the price of the handset is more important than the price of the monthly plan when they sign up for service. This makes it likely that consumers will even agree to a higher commitment in return for a better handset price.

An added bonus for the carrier that picks up on this idea: they will be able to advertise even lower “from” handset prices and eye a more attractive offering for all customers, since this minimum price will be based on the highest subsidy level that is only provided to the most valuable customers.

An enhanced subsidy can take consumers more effort to decide what’s the best for their situation, but in return for that they will get a handset at the price they deserve, so I think that little extra effort is a fair price to pay.

Bart Venlet is a telecom professional who spent the last 14 years working for Vodafone in various roles in Europe and Japan, and is currently looking for a job.

Got other ideas how Canadian carriers and consumers could one day kick their collective heroin habit of handset subsidies and world record contract lengths? Short of, ahem, regulation? jump in the comments. – ed

This is commendable work. Despite some progress the carriers have made recently towards simplifying plans, overall rate structures remain highly obfuscated in Canada. Therefore tools like this one that can bring any additional transparency are of great value.

A few caveats though, there are a few things the calculator does not take into consideration. On the cost side remember that all minutes are not created equal and nor are all “evenings”. On Rogers, for example, a minute can be one second long and an evening minute may start hours later than on a seemingly identical Fido plan.

The other factor not considered here is quality or value for service. A cheap plan isn’t much good if the network coverage doesn’t reach you or if all the handsets available are ancient crap (here’s looking at you flanker brands).

Some fun games you might be able to play with this tool: Check out the price discrimination by province! Find the best plans for the rather short list of specific phones actually worth buying: BBerry, Droids, Iphone, Pre etc. (once they all come out). Sounds like fodder for future articles.

LINK: www.cellphoneratecalculator.com

What we do know, is that things are looking up in Canada Wireless-wise. Compared, for instance, with our poor American neighbours to the south we now have not one but three (and soon to be more) offering the latest 3G standards all of whom offer, generally, far better reliability than the US’s largest GSM carrier AT&T.

On top of which we now have three carriers offering the iPhone 3GS as well as, we trust, some very nice next-generation androids and blackberries (9700′s) any day now.

It’s going to be a very good Christmas to look for smartphones and broadband sticks in your stockings.

Subject: Incoming Calls are paid(??!!!)

I just arrived in Vancouver from Europe only to find out that in this part of the world you have to actually pay for your incoming calls! And on top of that you get to pay over $30 for a mere 100 min. I thought it was a joke but it turned out it is true.

It is important because people should know that is not the way it is done in developed countries since 1997.

Not only that Andreas but some carriers will charge you long distance fees on top of that even for incoming calls.

Why is this? Well our understanding (but internet please correct us we’ve got this wrong) is that the difference in europe is that carriers pay to each other (and earn) termination fees for incoming calls landing on each other’s network whearas in North America this doesn’t happen (due to the legacy of free local calling on POTS. So in europe the carriers have incentive to encourage incoming calls while in North America it would just be lost revenue opportunity to give away incoming. That being said, a lot of the carriers do offer some kind of free calling plans to numbers on the same network, or some clever folks out there hang on to legacy plans that do offer unlimited incoming.

Hint: free incoming, if you can get it, is a great thing to combine with a service like Jajah that acts as a clever middleman to turn all your calls into a local incoming callback.

Originally presented at FITC Mobile 2009 in Toronto.

But just think of mobile apps for a minute. LBA or location based apps have been hyped as some kind of a big deal. The problem is, and a lot of people seem to miss this point, if you are anywhere near home you probably already have a fairly good idea of things around you. At least the interesting things. And you know how to read the signs and how to find your way around.

It’s when you are out of your home range however that mobile location-based-apps can be enormously valuable. Google maps are a lifesaver when trying to find directions abroad. On top of maps there’s a wealth of apps that can help you find good restaurants, interesting sights, hotel deals etc. In an ancient city like Rome, the place is absolutely soaking in history and it absolutely cries out for augmented reality applications to let you visualize or at least understand more about the history and architecture of almost anyplace you might be standing.

As it stands now, this market, for Canadians doesn’t exist. At current roaming rates it’s quite literally cheaper to buy your phone a seat on AirCanada and fly it return back to Canada than it is to share or stream a mere 25MB of data to your friends (say 10 digital pictures or a couple minutes of streaming qik video). And buying a local SIM is little help when the vast majority of phones are sold locked (or CDMA for that matter).

For services this valuable it makes sense to charge a little for it. We pay $30 for a month of data in Canada, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to charge another $30/week for the convenience of data on the road. In reality though, actual roaming rates are a thousand times higher than this.

It’s time for this to change.

addendum: How do we fix it? Well at best Canadian carrier policies or anything Canadian regulators could do covers only half the problem. It may take cross-border co-operation or regulation (as in the EU), or perhaps competition from other technologies (global standards on open spectrum anyone?).

From Today’s NationalPost:

Globalive Wireless has been racing to bring its offering to market as quickly as possible. By next summer, without the delays occasioned by the CRTC review, Globalive Wireless would have launched its services in many Canadian markets, employed an estimated 2,000 people and spent over $1 billion building its network.

The incumbents responded to the threat of new competition in predictable ways: they cut prices and suggested they would provide better customer service. Fair enough although one wonders whether that would have happened without the threat of more competition. Somewhat more cynically, they sought to game the regulatory system in a way that could delay and seriously complicate the introduction of wireless competition.

LINK: Wireless Wars: Barriers to new providers -Ken Campbell CEO Globalive Wireless
Funny that Rogers doth not protest. It’s almost like they know that as the one carrier selling out iphones, blackberries, and rocket sticks faster than they can back up the trucks, that they are the least of whose lunch will be eaten by the upstarts.

You’ll notice that Bell has primarily hung on to market share in recent years only thanks it’s acquisition of Aliant. Telus is has been aggressive at growing share, while Rogers iPhone bump is less than you might expect. Not less than you might expect however if we plotted revenue share of market instead of subscribers (postpaid+prepaid) which is what this diagram illustrates. Rogers ARPU (average revenue per user) is substantially higher. Rogers advantage of being the only carrier with the latest GSM handsets has helped them maintain the industry highest prices and the highest market share.

These totals include virtual operators (e.g. Virgin counts as Bell) and all of the big guy’s familiar wanker flanker brands.

In all cases every carrier has been adding significant subscriber numbers in every quarter over the last 4 years. But there’s a ways to go yet. Canada is still sadly behind the world in penetration. Previously: Mobile penetration ekes up to 70% in Canada, still sucks

source: CWTA (the horse’s mouth)