Competition is a wonderful thing, and is finally having an effect in Canada where cellular voice/data users have long groused about high prices. Tiptoeing behind Telus and Rogers, communications giant Bell has now puffed away its system access fee: the notorious monthly charge that many Canadian telcos have slapped on bills but for new plans only.

 

Bell didn’t announce this; instead it came out in media reports on Friday. A CBC story said “a spokesperson for Bell did not respond to a request for comment, but a company store in Toronto confirmed the $6.95 monthly charge has been discontinued on new plans. Existing customers can stay on their current plans and keep paying the fee, or they can move to the new offerings.”

 

Bell’s move means no national cell phone carrier is charging the fee, although SaskTel is still charging customers $6.25 a month in Saskatchewan. A spokesperson for SaskTel said the company is reviewing its fee structure.

 

The move to drop the system access fee began, said the CBC in March 2008 when Telus launched Koodo, its discount brand, sans the change. Rogers and Bell did likewise with Fido and Solo offerings. Prompting Bell, and Rogers and Telus for the mainstream offerings is competition from new startup wireless suppliers set to go live in 2010 such as Dave Wireless, Public Mobile, and Videotron (News - Alert) who the CBC said have promised no hidden fees.

 

To compensate, though but not wholly, the carriers have hiked their plans’ base rates, leaving users a ‘loonie’ $1 coin or ‘toonie’ $2 coin and some other change in their pockets - enough to buy maybe a small coffee at Canada’s de facto national trademark Tim Hortons’ chain.

 

“However, like Rogers and Telus, Bell has increased the price of most monthly plans by $5, according to the [unnamed Bell company] store,” the CBC reported. “Rogers was first to pull the trigger on its core brand in September, but it added a new "regulatory recovery fee" that ranges between $2.46 and $3.46 depending on the province, and raised the base price of its plans. “Telus got rid of its fee and raised base plan prices last month, while MTS (News - Alert) last week replaced it with a "wireless network charge" of $3.50 a month.”

 

The CBC story relayed the telcos’ side; all of them said the system access fee “was necessary to help cover network maintenance and upgrade costs, as well as regulatory expenses.” Doing away with it increased transparency to customers.

 

The carriers are still not out of the north woods though. The CBC said the ones who slapped the fees are contending with a more than $20 billion class action lawsuit.

 

“Tony Merchant, the lawyer behind the lawsuit, says the cell phone providers misled customers for years into thinking the charge was a regulatory or government fee when in fact it wasn’t,” the CBC said. “The cell phone providers have denied the accusation and the lawsuit is before the courts.”