CRTC (Canada) bans cellhpones unlocking fees

[ZeBigLOL]

Wow, it really took you a long time Canada. I think we in Israel had this law passed in 2011 and banned costs for leaving the carrier and you can change your carrier without changing your number.

I think there was also a program for doing that from your own PC, I think I saw it some of the big Smartphone forums.

[Big Head Tech]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

To say that CDMA and GSM are "frequency types" is incredibly misleading.

 

For example, GSM and CDMA can both operate at the following frequencies:

850 MHz

900 MHz

1900 MHz

 

(There are others)

 

Most of the time, carriers used different frequencies due to how governments license out the bands, but in other parts of the world, the opposite may be true, again, due to how governments license out the bands (and specifically, which bands are reserved for non-cellular use).

GSM and CDMA work completely different with how they route traffic through a tower. For many years CDMA was able to route more traffic per tower up to 10 times but could not allow multiple traffic types (calling/voice vs data) through at the same time per connection. GSM was able to do this at lower volumes per tower. Fast forward to LTE, the signal structure is the same as GSM However the capacity has been increased to past the original CDMA capacity of connections per tower. Hence why VZW specifically is now transitioning to LTE for voice from CDMA. Their data has been on LTE for awhile so their phones uses both signal types CDMA AND LTE (GSM), for older areas that only support 3g CDMA voice/text as 4g LTE data has been rolled out pretty much Nationwide. However there are pockets where 3g CDMA data exists over LTE.

 

I think where the confusion is Verizon is much different than anyone else they were CDMA only until 4g LTE. Our 4g network is an evolution of GSM. Other carriers might be different. For example att and TMobile hspa 3g and edge are all GSM.

[handymanshandle]

7 hours ago, ibabyslapper said:

I didn't know locked phones still existed.

Well, I haven't taken out a phone contract for five years now. I just buy smartphones new or refurb these days online since they're so cheap now, and yearly incremental updates are small. I have a late 2015 flagship android phone I got summer last year, and plan to upgrade in a few months and it'll cost me about £350 if that for a late 2016 flagship. I'll get about £200 back from selling my old phone too.

 

Getting a phone on contract is stupid for me since all I use is about 1gb, if that, of data a month, and taking out what's a loan with a different name is just a waste of money at the end of the contract. Especially when there's Wi-Fi everywhere you go these days.

 

Even if you do use your phone a lot a contract is still pretty dumb for most people since they'd save a lot more money going pre-paid or sim-only monthly (at least in the UK where I get 1p per MB with 100MB of free data every time I pre-pay on super-reliable 4G LTE, and there are sim-only plans that give you data for less than half of the price of the pre-paid plan as long as you don't mind paying for 3-5 GB at a time along with the usual 100s of texts and calls). It's just an old belief that pay-monthly (as it's called in the UK) is cheaper than pre-paid/sim-only, that was true in the blackberry curve days and before that, but simply isn't now.

 

And even if I bought a new phone from my network which I never do because they rip you off, it'll still be unlocked out of the box and this has been the case for more than three years.

So well done Canada, you're on the way to pushing your lazy-ass telecoms industry to move out of the 2010s.

heh they exist in the US for sure...

 

these are the bands that my S6 on Verizon has.

 

and here are some examples of what frequencies and bands that other carriers in the US have.

but also the tech is different. 1900MHz Band 2 PCS would be different than whatever Verizon's 1900MHz Band 2 thing would be right?

[EhhZeke]

16 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Regional carriers (Sasktel, in your example).

 

It proves, 100%, without a doubt, that more competition is desperately needed in the rest of Canada. Competition works.

 

We have Freedom Mobile (formerly Wind Mobile), which is now owned by Shaw, but their network coverage is basically insignificant outside of the major cities. Even a few KM outside of the cities they cover and you're out of their network. They're slowly increasing, and hopefully the money Shaw can invest will help faster expansion.

 

I've resorted to getting a Manitoba Plan from Koodo ($55/mo for 5GB Data and unlimited everything else).

Actually I have Telus, the Telus plans here in SK compared to ON are faaaar cheaper. I also compared other carriers before between the two provinces and SK is cheaper by far. It's definitely location based for the three major carriers.

[dalekphalm]

4 hours ago, ZekeV2 said:

Actually I have Telus, the Telus plans here in SK compared to ON are faaaar cheaper. I also compared other carriers before between the two provinces and SK is cheaper by far. It's definitely location based for the three major carriers.

Oh but what I mean is that your Telus plan is cheaper because Sasktel exists.

 

You're 100% right, the rates are based on which province you're in. SK and MB have some of the cheapest plans in the country - QC is pretty cheap too but I don't think quite as cheap.

 

Can't say for the others - I just know that ON is goddamn the worst.

[dizmo]

On 2017-6-15 at 8:27 PM, Ryujin2003 said:

I have ATT in US, and didn't have to pay to unlock any of my phones. Their policy is have to have the phone for 2 years. Pretty much, after you pay it off and like to make sure you aren't jumping mid contract, they will allow you to unlock no issues.

This only makes sense to me. I don't know why they'd do it any other way. Especially if you just buy the phone outright. It's such a backwards system. 

On 2017-6-16 at 1:03 AM, KOMTechAndGaming said:

what?

The fact that you can unlock your phone for free in no way means it's the same everywhere. 

On 2017-6-17 at 8:49 AM, dalekphalm said:

Manufacturers do NOT want to make 15 different versions of a cellphone just to handle different networks and different network technologies. Keep in mind, even between old legacy tech like CMDA and GSM, there are multiple potential frequencies, with regional and local variations. LTE has the same issue. There are multiple bands (frequencies) that are used worldwide for LTE, even among all the companies that use SIM cards.

 

If they can make one piece of hardware that will be able to support any of the carriers worldwide, that will save them a lot of money - the extra cost of a radio that supports all the frequencies as opposed to some of the frequencies, is minuscule compared to the cost of creating, designing, manufacturing, and marketing the same phone with small tiny variations multiple times.

They already kind of do. The technology to support a ton of bands has been available for a while, it's just not widely implemented. Phone manufacturers will produce what the companies ask, because they want that business. I don't imagine the design and manufacturing costs are much of anything at all, and the manufacturer isn't responsible for marketing different models of the same phone. 

22 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

We have Freedom Mobile (formerly Wind Mobile), which is now owned by Shaw, but their network coverage is basically insignificant outside of the major cities. Even a few KM outside of the cities they cover and you're out of their network. They're slowly increasing, and hopefully the money Shaw can invest will help faster expansion.

To be fair they now have plans that allow 1gb and a huge amount of voice on the "away" networks. So you're not left without coverage in the least. 

[Ryujin2003]

23 minutes ago, dizmo said:

This only makes sense to me. I don't know why they'd do it any other way. Especially if you just buy the phone outright. It's such a backwards system. 

The fact that you can unlock your phone for free in no way means it's the same everywhere.

So, i didn't hear them go into detail in WAN show... But in US, my company sells a lot of unlocked phones. It becomes carrier locked once you insert the first SIM Card though. Is Canada's thing about keeping it forever unlocked? Or will it be similar? Yes it'll help with preloaded bloatware, but it's not truly unlocked if it becomes locked to the first carrier. But I think that is more of a security feature, not something to prevent you from using your phone.

[dizmo]

1 minute ago, Ryujin2003 said:

So, i didn't hear them go into detail in WAN show... But in US, my company sells a lot of unlocked phones. It becomes carrier locked once you insert the first SIM Card though. Is Canada's thing about keeping it forever unlocked? Or will it be similar? Yes it'll help with preloaded bloatware, but it's not truly unlocked if it becomes locked to the first carrier. But I think that is more of a security feature, not something to prevent you from using your phone.

It's not a security feature, it keeps you tied to that network and nothing else. In Canada the phone would be permanently unlocked. 

[dalekphalm]

8 hours ago, Ryujin2003 said:

So, i didn't hear them go into detail in WAN show... But in US, my company sells a lot of unlocked phones. It becomes carrier locked once you insert the first SIM Card though. Is Canada's thing about keeping it forever unlocked? Or will it be similar? Yes it'll help with preloaded bloatware, but it's not truly unlocked if it becomes locked to the first carrier. But I think that is more of a security feature, not something to prevent you from using your phone.

The CRTC has made locked phones illegal as of December 1st, period. That means, for example, with an iPhone - normally it would lock to the carrier upon first activation, but as of December 1st, that will no longer be the case.

 

Any existing locked phones will have to be unlocked for free upon request, as of December 1st.

 

Right now, it's mandatory for carriers to unlock a device you own (eg: not still being paid off), but they can charge any (or no) fee that they want. Most of the big carriers in Canada charge $50 per device for unlocking it.

[cozz]

On 6/16/2017 at 3:49 AM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Canadians are well known to be screwed by telecos all the time.

 

I pay $25 CAD a month for a simple unlimited text and 150 minute talk plan. I got like 1GB of LTE data and 150 minutes for $100 HKD without contract when I was in Hong Kong. That equates to around $17 CAD.

In Australia I pay $85 month for a

 

Samsung Galaxy S7

7GB of data

Unlimited calls and texts

100 minutes of international calls

 

The Australian and Canadian dollar are pretty much identical.

[dalekphalm]

6 hours ago, cozz said:

In Australia I pay $85 month for a

 

Samsung Galaxy S7

7GB of data

Unlimited calls and texts

100 minutes of international calls

 

The Australian and Canadian dollar are pretty much identical.

A plan like that in Canada from the big carriers like Bell or Rogers would be well over $100 - probably around the $135/month mark or even higher.  

[WkdPaul]

33 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

A plan like that in Canada from the big carriers like Bell or Rogers would be well over $100 - probably around the $135/month mark or even higher.  

Telus has a similar plan for $140;

http://www.telus.com/en/on/mobility/plans/?linktype=products_and_services&INTCMP=TcomHomeTile_MOB_Plans#smartphone

 

Rogers has it for $115

http://www.rogers.com/consumer/wireless/smartphone-plans?ipn=1

 

Bell's website is confusing af and I can't seem to find their plans ... must be in the same price range though!