Bell Canada has announced an unlimited mobile data plan for $75 per month. Details are available on the Bell website.

The plan is designed for wireless connection cards operating on Bell’s EVDO Rev A high speed mobile network, offering peak upload speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps and peak download speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps and covering about 70% of the Canadian population. The small print says that Bell’s acceptable use policies apply, meaning you agree not to use you device in a manner that “consumes excessive network capacity in Bell’s reasonable opinion, or causes our network, or our ability to provide services to others, to be adversely affected.”

A clause that will raise eyebrows is that you also agree not to use the service “for multi-media streaming, voice over Internet protocol or any other application which uses excessive network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell.” Well, so much for unlimited service!

These restrictions seem to conflict with some of the freedom that is promoted in the press release and may be artifacts of an older acceptable use policy. I’ll post an update if Bell lets me know that these restrictions no longer apply.

System access fees apply, so the monthly cost is actually $84, but this a dramatic improvement in data services affordability.

How will other carriers respond?

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Bell, EVDO

The certification of a class action suit on system access fees has driven a lot of extra eyeballs to this site today.

When I first looked at my web-stats today, I thought the extra hits would have been due to my coverage of Ted Rogers’ speech at the Canadian Club but in addition, a lot of people visited my older blog posts about:

1. I hate system access fees, from September 2006
2. Clarifying system access fees, from December 2006
3. CRTC ducks issue of system access fees, from July 2007
4. System access fees, one of my earliest posts from March 2006

My earlier posts continue to express my views on the subject.

You can usually count on Ted Rogers to come up with an entertaining speech, especially when parts of the business are being put at risk by government intervention.

In today’s speech at The Canadian Club in Ottawa, Ted said that the handouts being sought by large, well financed companies seeking to become new entrants would make them “The all-time corporate welfare bums in Canadian History!”

Here is a sample:

Remember that Canada had a fourth national carrier called Microcell with the FIDO brand that became insolvent in 2002 and was refinanced at huge losses to its debt holders only to be headed in the same direction again until Rogers rescued it in 2004.

So there were four carriers in Canada and the fourth one couldn’t make a go of it. One of our most vocal critics in the current debate is Vidéotron. As I have said Vidéotron was a minority shareholder in Microcell. When the Canadian wireless industry was not profitable and Microcell was in trouble, what did Vidéotron do? Did they spend more money as Rogers did and double down on what many considered to be a risky bet? No, they sold out of the business and left Microcell to sink or swim.

Now that the wireless business is profitable, Vidéotron wants back in with a few handouts from their competitors and subsidies and patronage from the government.

Ted also took a shot at MTS Allstream:

Another company that is pointing the finger of blame is MTS, the phone company in Manitoba. But they have been providing wireless for 20 years in Manitoba. They were one of the original licensees. They say that Canadian prices are too high and they say that Canadian wireless networks are not advanced enough. But it is their own pricing they are complaining about and their own dated CDMA technology at which they are pointing their fingers.

They would have you believe that if they offered service across Canada that suddenly their prices will drop and their technology will improve. What a specious argument. Talk about sucking and blowing at the same time.

He concluded by saying that he doesn’t oppose new entry.

We just think that new entrants should buy the spectrum in an open auction like everyone else. They are large, well-financed companies and they should put their money up like every other wireless provider.

Pierre-Karl Peladeau is speaking at Toronto’s Empire Club tomorrow and his speech, entitled “Why pay more and get less? Taking on Canada’s Protected Wireless Market” will have lots of rebuttal.

I plan to provide a review of the Empire Club speech tomorrow.

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Rogers, AWS

Summer is over and it is time for advocacy to move back onto the rubber chicken circuit.

There are a couple luncheon addresses coming up this week that are certain to pointed address the issues associated with the rules for the advanced wireless services spectrum auction.

Ted Rogers is speaking at the Canadian Club of Ottawa today and we’ll hear rebuttal from Pierre Karl Peladeau of Quebecor speaking at the Empire Club in Toronto tomorrow. Watch for wireless spectrum auction issues to be a major part of their speeches.

By the way, Industry Canada tells us that there is some PCS spectrum available on a first come, first served basis. Spectrum for Northern Quebec, the Yukon and Saskatchewan can be yours for the asking.