Help Please! Choosing a Cellphone Service!

IronMac

To paraphrase Barebones' old slogan, which cellphone service s--ks the least?

Am looking for a service primarily in Toronto with occasional l-d calls outside of Ontario and to Quebec. Very rarely will there be any calls to the U.S.

So, which of the four horsemen of apocalyptic cellphone service is the lesser evil?

SINC

I have used Telus Mobility since 1988 and never had a problem no matter where I travelled. By far, more coverage in the west. Not aware of the east though, although mine always worked fine in London and Toronto and area.

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autopilot

i do have a corporate plan using bell so take thisd with a grain of salt, but i find their plans aren't as restrictive as rogers and you get way more bang for your buck then on fido, plus better coverage.

i have no experience with telus.

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CubaMark

CBC's MarketPlace did a feature store on just this topic:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/f...nes/index.html


M

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iPetie

My main issue with these companies is Customer service. I have dealt with them all with the exception of Fido.
Bell - Quite easily the worst customer service in the world, let alone Canada. Irregardless of Home, Wireless or whatever the service may be. Great Coverage. Extremely poor quality handsets.
Telus - Decent customer service - same coverage and shared network with Bell. Clearnet philosophy on CS seems to have carried over. Poor Quality handsets.
Rogers - Extremely good customer service. Nice, helpful people that seem a little more empowered to solve issues. They have to be at Rogers, in my experience has more issues than the others. Good to very good coverage. Best- highest quality handsets.
We have had service from them all over a period of 10 years all across the country.
So this is my opinion. Go with Rogers, their phones work everywhere in the world with the exception of Japan and Korea and a couple of others. CS is very good. Handset Manufacturers and quality are the best. Coverage is very good but not quite as good as Bell and Telus.

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The Great Waka

Well, I've been on CityFido for about 6 months now, and I've had enough. Reception is pathetic, and EVERY phone call drops out around the 15min mark, without fail. Unacceptable. Now with the merger with Rogers, I thought that my reception might improve. Of course, the added Rogers towers will only affect the non-CityFido customer, plus I now get to pay more for the plan unless I sign a contact. Goodbye.

So I have been looking at going back to Telus (which I was with before Fido) who has the best reception. Their plan aimed at Rogers and Fido customers is $45/month for 700 mins plus unlimited evening and weekends. I don't think I've used my unlimited plan any more than that, so it won't be any loss for me. Also, if I sign up for a 3 year contact with them on this, I get one year free. The only problem is I have to give them my Fido phone, which means I can't sell it to make some money back on this $400 investment. However, the year free would offset this. I've been looking at getting the new Motorola V710, which as Bluetooth, but unfortunately iSync doesn't support Motorola's Bluetooth protocols, and OnSync says that the V710's Bluetooth is missing some stuff, so it won't work there either. However, a firmware updating is apparently coming mid-Feb from Motorola, which should fix the issue at least with OnSync, and hopefully Apple will adopt the other Bluetooth protocols in the next release of iSync. So the Bluetooth option is more of a future thing.

Anyone know if I can buy a Japanese or Korean CDMA phone and use it here on Telus? Or do CDMA phones not work that way?

Anyway, to make a long story short, stay away from Fido, and especially CityFido, considering now that they even nerfed the program after March 1.

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sinjin

I use Rogers Pays As You Go and have had no real complaints.

When I was looking at plans I did the math: the cheapest plans are (now) about $25 + fees per month making it about $35 before you're on the air. If you are a "typical" cell user (i.e. not using it for work, a chatty-cathy, replacing a land line, or a teenager trying to look cool) you talk for 30 mins to 1.5 hrs on the cell per month. That means you spend between $0.38-1.17 per minute, give or take. I figured I was in the 30 mins a month range, so $1.17 per min.

On pay as you go you can pay as little as $10 (which includes service fees) and get charged between $0.25-0.33 per minute depending on your plan. So 30 mins is $10, savings of ~$25. The minutes you don't use roll over to the next month as long as you top every 30 days (no problem with autopay). I almost always have minutes left over which works out great for travelling, it allows me to use the cell indiscriminately on the road.

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autopilot

damn, sinjin, you really made a good point there. i may go back to pay as you go when my bell contract expires in august. i would have to invest in a new handset if i went to rogers, but in that case, i could get a much better gsm phone.

we all assume the motorola "iphone" will be gsm, right?

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jonmon

I voted for Rogers and I'm also on Paygo
$10/month and my minutes keep building up, unless I'm really chatty a particular month

I went with Rogers because of GSM so that I can swap phones without paying some ridiculous ESN swap fee that you have with CDMA phones (and no; overseas CDMA phones won't work with Telus or Bell here)

Rogers also has new towers on the 850mhz band, which penetrates better than 1900. As previously mentioned, Fido pay as you go and cityfido cannot take advantage of these new tower.

I was with Telus before and had no problems with them, but the option to upgrade your phone at will made me switch.

mrjimmy

I have been with Fido since the beginning and have been very happy with their service. When coverage became an issue I opted for an analog/ digital phone which gave me access to networks outside of Fido's coverage area. Their plans make sense and are very reasonably priced. Customer service and billing has always been problem free. My only concern is that they are now owned by a giant money gouging ccrporation. I fear less competition will lead to higher prices and limited flexiibilty.

I think the most important question with cell phones today is when are we going to be able to purchase our phone number?