THE LAUNCH LAST week of Rogers Communications’ new $75/month 10 GB Infinite unlimited wireless data plan has forced the entire Canadian wireless industry to respond.
While Bell and Telus quickly offered what more or less amounts to a matching offer the day after Rogers made its announcement, Telus has since offered additional, new $75 plans and regional carriers Videotron and Eastlink have now matched the pricing.
Only Rogers, however, has said this new pricing is long-term, while the others have set expiry dates on their offers, or have said they are for a limited time, but no fixed end date.
It’s worth noting here, of course, that Freedom’s “Big Gig”, launched a year and a half ago, is still only $60/month, with no overage fees.
While $75 for lots of data has been the headline, there are some key differences in what the companies are offering, however.
While Rogers is offering unlimited high speed data up to 10 GB/month, it is slowing the speeds of data delivered past that limit to 256 Kbps (there are also two other higher-priced plans with more offered data, and customers can buy 3 GB high speed data chunks with a $5 speed pass). So, the data is unlimited, and the speed is not. Bell’s offer slows the speed to 256 Kbps past 10 GB, too.
On Tuesday, Telus added a new wrinkle to the mix with two different promotional plans, starting at $75 for 10GB and $95 for 20GB of high-speed data, plus endless usage thereafter, as long as customers bring their own device.
However, when customers reach their allocated high-speed data max, they can continue to use their data at reduced speeds up to 512kbps for the remainder of their billing cycle (so, twice as fast as Rogers and Bell, but still around 500-times slower than high speed 4G LTE can deliver). Telus is also calling theirs “no overage” promotions and not “unlimited”, which is the language Freedom has chosen, too.
These new Telus plans are also promotions that customers can take advantage of only until July 2.
Also this week, Vidéotron jumped into the fray with a $75/month, 17 GB high speed data plan for customers, when you bring your own phone. It’s not an “unlimited” or “no overage” plan and it’s $110 if it’s a new phone from the company. It expires July 9.
Not to be outdone, Halifax-based Eastlink this week matched the price, offering 15 GB of data for that price. It already had a $70/10GB offer in the market. It’s a limited time offer with no set end date, said a spokesperson, and while it’s also not unlimited data, all of Eastlink customers are given what the company calls “Worry-Free Data” where the company notifies customers when they are approaching, and reached, their limit and then pause them so they don’t go over. Eastlink also offers all devices (iPhones, too) at $0 down, if customers choose.
The company spokesperson also noted that less than 0.5% of its customers surpass 10 GB of monthly data.
The plans and promotions mentioned above also include certain other limitations (like roaming fees when users of the regional carriers travel beyond their home network), qualifiers and the possibility of contracts, which we’re not going to outline here. Also, we would guess consumers are hungry for the plans based on the fact we have not had the patience to endure the wait online or on the phone to get through to our carrier to opt for the plan that beats our existing one on both price and data levels.
Ed note: For what it’s worth, it seems the “infinite” symbol is a natural fit for this type of data offering among marketers (see images below). While Rogers wound its mobius logo into the symbol, Bell copied it for their promo – and it also makes an appearance on the Videotron web site. However, an alert reader notified us that Ice Wireless, which serves the far north (and offers 3 GB of data for $60/month or 12GB for $100, among other offers) used the infinity symbol some years ago (see images below). Perhaps Telus will twist a little critter (a Canadian garter snake perhaps?) into the same infinite loop…
