“I’m going to go back to the fact that we’re not funding anything at this point.”
“We are continuously investing to provide world-class services, reliable connections, and to support the rapidly changing increasing network demands.”
Those are two statements that I have heard from representatives at Bell in a two-week period of time.
The first was from Rob Tedesco, Bell Mobility senior advisor, at a meeting chaired by Perth-Wellington MPP John Nater on Nov. 24 in Listowel.
The second was from Faye Katsaros, a VP at Bell, in an email to myself on Dec. 6 – and certainly, thousands of other customers – why my son’s monthly cell phone plan will be going up $6 per month, starting in February 2024.
To put this into context, it’s going from $35 to $41 per month for call and text only. That represents a 17.14 per cent increase, so to say this is an inflationary increase would be misleading.
If anyone was within ear shot of me when I read that email on Dec. 6, I apologize for the language and ensuing rant that was muttered under my breath that day.
My first thought when reading that email was, naturally, “Are you serious?”
My second thought was, “Who is telling the truth here?”
The conspiracy theorist in me immediately thought this was a response to the Nov. 24 meeting by Bell – I do, after all, have a Listowel number – and after Tedesco made the claim that some minor improvements would be made to a tower in downtown Listowel, Bell needed to come up with the money to fund it.
However, a look at the 2022 financial report would indicate otherwise.
Earlier this year, Bell reported $24.17 billion in revenues and $3.253 billion in profits in 2022.
Circling back to the Nov. 24 conversations, Tedesco told those in attendance that in early November, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ordered Bell and TELUS to offer wholesale internet service over its fibre networks in Ontario and Quebec.
Coincidentally, shortly after that announcement, Bell announced a $1 billion cut to all capital expenditures, and a reduction in 700,000 locations from its planned fibre network builds, citing the CRTC decision as a reason why.
So what is it, Bell? Are you investing in improving “Canada’s best and fastest network” (more on that in a moment) or are you cutting back in infrastructure projects?
Either way, why are you asking me (and many others) to foot the bill?
Bell Canada claims to be Canada’s best and fastest network, but as many in North Perth will tell you, it’s far from it.
Want to make a phone call or send a text from the Wallace soccer field? Not going to happen.
Want to make a phone call from Gowanstown? Good luck with that.
What happened to that call I was just on in downtown Listowel? It dropped.
We get the “best” service for some of the highest cell phone rates in the world. And I use best in quotations because I question if it really is.
Stewart Skinner, regular Banner columnist and well-travelled farmer, commented on X (the cesspool formerly known as Twitter) on Friday, in response to another post about cell service, that he wishes “It could be as good as the developing world.”
“I can get solid 4G in a mud hut in the Rift Valley, but I can’t make a call from most parts of my house,” wrote Skinner.
This is not meant to be an insult to those in eastern Africa, but how is it that you can get better cell phone reception there than you can in the Wallace Ward? And at a fraction of the price, to boot!
Rewheel, an independent telecom research firm, reports year after year that Canada is home to some of the most expensive cell phone plans in the world, with the median price more than 30 per cent higher than the equivalent plan in the United States.
I can confirm this.
The plan I have for my personal phone with Bell costs $75 per month, and gets me the unlimited voice, long distance (except to calls to the United States, so is it unlimited long distance?) and unlimited data (up to 40 gigabytes at maximum speed).
The same plan through Mint Mobile – owned by Canadian entertainment icon Ryan Reynolds – in the United States? $15 per month.
If I was only paying $15 a month for my plan, I’d be more than happy with the dropped calls, low or no-service areas, and the constant excuses of how cutbacks were necessary to maintain profitability.
But for $75 a month, we should be receiving world-class cell service.
My fear is that we will never get the cell service we deserve – and require to do business, or call an ambulance in an emergency – with the current makeup of cellular companies we have in Canada. It will take some catastrophic happening – a death that could have been prevented – for this to happen.
As Sharon D’Arcey said on Nov. 24, “We would like to be proactive rather than reactive.”
Bell, let’s talk about making these much-needed improvements before something really bad happens.
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Mike Wilson is the editor of the Listowel Banner. Comments and feedback are welcome at mwilson@midwesternnewspapers.com.
