A week after questioning Rogers about its new device setup fee and other charges to customers, the CRTC has sent the wireless giant a new letter asking about its intention to add a $5 monthly charge to its customers’ bills starting next month.
“I have been informed today that Rogers Communications Canada Inc. (Rogers) informed its mobile wireless customers through a note on their billing statement that it intends to add a $5 monthly charge to their mobile wireless customers’ bills as of 15 July 2026, calling it a Wireless Plan Rate Adjustment,” wrote Scott Hutton, the CRTC’s vice president of consumer, analytics and strategy, in a June 23 letter addressed to Howard Slawner, Rogers’s vice president of regulatory affairs for telecom.
Noting that the CRTC recently launched a consultation on the harmonization of its four consumer codes, Hutton in his letter to Rogers referenced one of the existing consumer protections for mobile wireless customers relating to the minimum monthly charge for services included in the contract.
“It is defined in the Wireless Code as: ‘The minimum amount that customers will have to pay for wireless services each month if they do not use optional services or incur any additional fees or overage charges. This charge may be subject to taxes, as set out in the contract,’” Hutton wrote.
“The minimum monthly charge is a key contract term that cannot be changed by a service provider during the commitment period without the account holder’s or authorized user’s informed and express consent (Section D.1. of the Wireless Code),” Hutton continued.
He then asked Rogers to answer questions set out in the letter, by July 3, in order for CRTC staff “to better understand the situation.”
First among them is whether Rogers is imposing its new monthly charge during a customer’s ongoing commitment period. “Answer for customers who are subscribed to a longer-term contract and those on a month-to-month contract, describing when the fee would first be imposed,” Hutton instructed.
“In either case, please explain how this mandatory monthly charge is presented in your contracts and whether it is done so as part of the minimum monthly charge key contract term,” he added.
A Rogers spokesperson told Cartt that the $5 is an adjustment to the monthly price of some wireless customers’ plans not on a financing term.
The CRTC has recently been questioning the Big Three wireless companies about new fees they have started charging customers, with some media stories reporting some type of rate adjustment from the other two telecom giants.
Prior to the commission’s new rules prohibiting fees for activating, modifying or cancelling wireless and internet service plans coming into effect on June 12, the CRTC’s Hutton wrote to Bell in May about its new $40 device handling fee and also queried Telus on June 9 about a new $15 SIM purchase fee it planned to introduce. In both cases, the telcos were warned their new fees could violate the CRTC’s new rules.
Then on June 12, the CRTC’s director of social and consumer policy, Nanao Kachi, wrote separately to Bell and Telus asking if they had stopped charging these new fees to customers.
That was followed by a June 16 letter from Kachi to Rogers’s Slawner, questioning a new $40 device setup charge the company had introduced — as well as a $25 shipping charge and unspecified SIM fee, which the letter suggested were also new charges, but a Rogers spokesperson told Cartt were not new.
The CRTC has indicated in its various letters to Bell, Telus and Rogers that it hoped matters could be resolved and would not require more formal regulatory action.
