By Aldo Panessidi

Kudos to Rogers for scaling its LTE (Long Term Evolution) network to reach 11 million Canadians so quickly. As of today, that coverage has been expanded to include service in major Montreal and of island suburbs including Terrebonne, Brossard, Longueil, Laval, and Vaudreuil. At the moment, the LTE network is available to Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto and their environs.  Discover the latest LTE enabled unlocked cell phones.

According to today’s announcement, the mobile carrier will not stop there. The LTE expansion project intends to encompass twenty-five additional Canadian cities in 2012. The company has decided not to fill the public in on what those cities are, but the end game is to have LTE coverage for 20 million Canadian customers by the end of this year.

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As the company was first to market with an LTE launch for Canada, this continued growth spells competition for Bell Mobility, Telus, Fido, and other up and coming providers who would love to pair that kind of network coverage with the more costly data plans and schnazzy new LTE-enabled smartphones.  Consumer forums indicate that customers have yet to see a high value to this technology that matches the associated cost.

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Consequently, this Rogers network could potentially have peek download speeds of 150 Mbps and upload speeds of 70Mbps. Real-world usage is bound to be slower, but customers seemingly have no cap on their need for speed and new tech. The result is consumption of more data, faster which typically result in shocking cell phone bills.

The flip side is that the 4G LTE data plan costs can result in consumers choosing a 3G handset with a more attractive data plan. Once the major competitors like Bell Mobility, Telus and the others kick in – we should see a drop in resulting in an uptick in 4G LTE smartphones.

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By Megan Fleet

Canadian Android fans rejoice! The company’s poster child, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, is no longer exclusive to Bell and Virgin. As of JANUARY 13,2012; the popular smartphone is available to TELUS, Rogers, and Fido. In addition to the end of this era of exclusivity, this change is heralding in the first Android 4.0 device to Canada as well. To this writer, it rings of a changing of the tides for the attitudes of unlocked phones.

At the various carriers and Best Buy, there are many promotions accompanying this release that vie for customers’ signatures on long-term service contracts. Individual carriers are making the device available for a price ranging from $99.99 to $159.99 for a three year contract. For those customers open to the potential high costs of such a long contract, Best Buy is the best bet as it will extend the $99.99 promotion to all carriers.  In addition to engaging in a price war, all vendors are luring customers with the latest innovative protective cases and skins.

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However, when taking the gleaming distractions of the Ice Cream Sandwich OS and the ever impressive Galaxy Nexus, customers should not blindly rush into such agreements without recognizing a few things. Smartphone technology is developed and released at a rapid rate. The cost of opting out of a contract if the next must-have phone is an exclusive with another carrier and takes some luster out of promotional deals. Last, by considering unlocked cell phones that are not tied to a contract, you hold the power deciding on which carrier provides the lowest priced service contract that best  meets your unique mobile lifestyle needs.

This gives you the ability to have both the device you crave and the ability to walk away from a contract or plan that does not suit your needs. Hence, allowing time to rationally decide how you truly use your phone (do you SMS or MMS a lot? How much data do you use? Are you a chatty Cathy?) Then, you look for the best deal from there.

Regardless of your choice, happy shopping and don’t forget to protect your investment with the proper case, screen skins, and hands free headsets!

By Megan Fleet

The appeal of Apple and its iPhone, iPad, and other products has often been one of exclusivity.  In the spirit of a handsfree world, Visual Voicemail gives customers access to voicemail without dialing and has been one such feature iPhone users have been able to take advantage of.

Luckily for consumers with both unlocked cell phone or regular  handsets, they already have their pick of Bluetooth and headsets to up their convenience and safety abilities. And, the Visual Voicemail functionality may be coming their way shortly. Recently documents were leaked indicating that Visual Voicemail will become available on select Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S 2, the Motorola Droid RAZR as well as the BlackBerry Bold 9900 .

For Canadian customers on the Rogers’ network, they will have the benefit of an in-house developed application. Rumors noted that service should be available in February and will cost the same as the non-visual enhanced voicemail currently available with Rogers. For RIM,the launch will extend these new services to support BlackBerry 9700 and Blackberry 9790 devices.

The service will be named “Visual Voicemail Plus” and finally offers an edge on iPhone users: the capacity to save voicemail messages indefinitely. As ever, this kind of storage is exactly the kind of convenience that customers look for at every level of their experience which accounts for continued use of memory cards with smartphones.

Undoubtedly, additional platforms and devices will supported after the launch. The leaked documents noted that any phone with MMS functionality will have Visual Voicemail made available as well. This will include less popular mobile OS like legacy Symbian and Windows Mobile. The biggest question mark is whether the new Rogers Visual Voicemail Plus offering will require additional data plans as the product works through data usage in lieu of dialing.

By Megan Fleet

Some things sound too good to be true. There is always a price to be paid. In the world of smartphones and contracts, the pipers are usually paid with hours of time, creative loopholes for promotional deals, and hidden costs with the long contacts signed to nab the desired handset of choice.

But, for those consumers who are in the market for a Samsung Galaxy Nexus and have avoided these long tied-in contracts or whose contract have come to term, there is a promotion that merits serious consideration.  As of January 13 , Best Buy has made this Android / Samsung poster child available for $99.99. This will require a three year contract, but the offer will extend to all carriers (apparently with the exception of Fido): Virgin Mobile, TELUS, Bell, and Rogers.

This is definitely an option to consider in comparison shopping as the official launch date of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Fido, TELUS, and Rogers is this Friday and three year contract deals are seeing handset costs around $160 or $600 outright. These carriers have began their sales of the Android 4.0 smartphone earlier than the announced release date, but TELUS will be releasing this device on Friday as well, but will match the Best Buy introductory price of $99.99 for signing a three year term.

With the number of carriers offering this kind of introductory offer, it isn’t likely to disappear any time soon. In the spirit of informed consumerism and seeing the true long term costs of both the new Galaxy Nexus handset and the contract terms, look at unlocked phone options and deals as well that will allow you to pick the best contract (and a more reasonable length!) for you.

Enhance your mobility and turn your device into a power tool!  Discover select accessories such as; stylus & pens, micro SD memory cards, batteries, docking stations, Bluetooth headsets, data cables and glider gloves all specifically designed to make your devices functionally efficient and performance rich.

Or, if the contract offering from Best Buy, TELUS, Rogers and all the like is your cup of tea, be sure to shop around for the protective cases and skins for your new smartphone and depending on the laws of your area, hands free accessories as well. No matter what route fits best, happy shopping and enjoy your new gadgets!

Look out; here comes little payments to the Rogers carrier. It is very clear over the course of the last years the mobile industry is heading toward NFC mobile payments at some point in the very near future. With some of the largest companies in the space developing the technology, comes as absolutely no prize that these companies are looking to launch their own mobile payment policy. It has been announced that the Rogers carrier will be looking to bring the whole technology to their earlier during the first quarter 2012. This technology will allow users to slide their mobile phones such as unlocked Samsung i897 Captivate in front of the sensor to make payments, instead of having to utilize their credit card for payment.

A number of Canadian companies including Rogers, Bell and TELUS started Zoompass in 2008 and since that time have been working to educate customers on the benefits of utilizing the service to send and receive payments from their mobile device. It is easy to see why people would be interested in using their mobile device to make payments while you’re out and about. Some large companies, such as StarBucks, I’ve already started accepting mobile payments at specific locations. This technology is likely going to become the way of the future and it will be interesting to see how these companies are able to utilize it to the best of their advantage.

Rogers will likely be launching this technology would be help of another credit card company, most likely Visa. It has not been announced to their murder and this may be, but you can expect that that information will be made available at some point in the very near future by the company, at least before the official launch comes. The fact that they’ve been able to put together such an excellent offering shows that they are going to be able to quickly and easily utilize this technology and make the switch from the first quarter of 2012.

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Fido is a company that is continually updating their plans to keep up with the ever-growing market within the country. The newest claim that they have announced might be their best. The company announced that they are planning to release a new $10 per month for 100 MB data plan that will first become available on August 3. A number of other companies have also announced that they are going to be offering this plan, and are subdivisions of Fido. Other brands that have offered this include Rogers as well as others. It will first become available on Rogers and may even become available on Chatr.

This announcement came from an internal document that was released mistakenly by the company to the Internet. The document gives an outline an overview of all of their plans and services, except those that will be for Blackberry devices such as unlocked Torch 9800. Fido has also stated within this document that they believe that the time is perfect for the upcoming Nokia C6 and the Samsung Galaxy Q to be a part of this deal. With these devices you would also be charged an additional five dollars for every hundred megabytes of data that you use.

A number of other companies including TELUS have had similar plans for quite some time, so this one is not really all that revolutionary when you look at things. Even so, it will be a great addition to the company and should be something great for many users to switch to. To say the very least, it will mean that many users will be able to save money per month, especially if they do not see themselves using a large amount of data. The company has made it clear that they are looking to add additional plans for the users that will make it easy for them to get great service at a discount price.

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TELUS has been cutting back on their charges for quite some time, and now they will be severely slashing their international roaming rates, which will be good news for unlocked cell phone users such as HTC Inspire, unlocked Blackberry Torch 9800, etc.. that leave the country quite a bit. The company will be slashing their international roaming rates by a total of more than 50%, according to a statement that the company released today. They also said that the slash in price would still allow for the company to remain profitable when it comes to roaming charges. Some of the drops will be as high as 60%. This is good news for TELUS users and shows that they are really interested in keeping the costs down for their users.

For users that are going to be in the Western side of Europe, Mexico, or in Oceania, they will be able to get the total down to about $1.50/minute, which is a huge savings over the amounts that we were seeing before. The data will also go down to just $10/MB, which is much lower than it was before as well.

It is good to see that they are slashing the rates of their international roaming charges as that was one of the biggest complaints of their users. Overall, TELUS has been able to put together a solid offering for their users with these hugely slashed prices. Users in the Middle East, Latin America, China, India and Africa will only have to pay a total of $2.50 per minute.

TELUS has made it a point to continually drop their prices when it is in the best interests of their customers as well as make an effort to keep up with the competition which has also been slashing prices as of late. This move is one that will be heralded by users such as HTC Maple unlocked, etc. that do a lot of traveling.

The Federal Court of Appeals has declared that WIND Mobile’s parent company is indeed a Canadian owned and controlled group, and that they do fall into compliance with the Canadian laws that regard foreign ownership. Of course, this was received not so well by a number of other companies in the same space that was likely hoping that WIND Mobile would be forced to be disbanded as a result.

Almost immediately after the ruling, both Public Mobile and TELUS, two companies that requested that they go back to court arguing that they wanted all wireless providers to be treated the same under the rules and be given the same access to the same amounts of capital.

Public, of course, was not happy with the decision that was handed down and quickly sent out a press release stating that they would be taking the issue to the supreme court the first opportunity that they got.

“The company plans to continue its pursuit for a level-playing field on the issue of foreign ownership and control of wireless carriers in Canada,” the company said in the press release they put out after the ruling was handed down. It was clear that they believe that they have not been given the same opportunity as WIND and are willing to fight it tooth and nail to the very end.

Public did say that they never believed that WIND should not be allowed in the marketplace, but said that they hoped that they would be subjected to the same rules that Public was, arguing that the funds that WIND had access to did not give everyone in the space a level playing field and definitely favored WIND. Look for the case to continue to expand as Public pushes it farther into the courts to get the ruling that they are looking for.

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J.D. Power and Associates have released their newest Customer Satisfaction Study for Canadian Wireless Companies. They study looked at a number of different factors including their customer service and the retail experience of their workers. Some of the other ways that they rated each provider included the cost, network quality, as well as their ability to manage accounts and also offer promotions.

The results came in from more than 15,000 unlocked cell phone users. The study was completed between the months of November 2010 and February 2011. The other carriers that were listed on the study include Rogers, Bell, TELUS, SasTel, Koodo, Virgin, and Fido. A number of the newer companies were not included on the list as they were working with a bit of a disadvantage.

The senior manage at JD Power and Associates said following the release of the information that the new features provided by these companies were the single biggest thing that caused users to switch from one company to another. The survey found that overall, the satisfaction of users decreased a fair amount over the course of the last year. The Canadian population is one that has embraced smart devices on the whole over the course of the last year and you can bet that they will continue to expand their offerings to meet the needs of these customers over the course of the next year.

Videotron was the winner in the overall satisfaction of their users. They have put together an excellent overall report card from the customer satisfaction survey and you can bet that they will continue to do so moving forward. They have been an excellently reviewed company since they first rose to popularity and their customers have remained loyal to them because of the excellent service that they provide.

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TELUS will be investing as much as $670 million in British Columbia throughout this year as the continually add to their networks and expand them. The company is looking to add wireless and wireline networks to their already impressive array of networks. The company has announced that $4 million of that total will be heading directly to Vernon. The Vernon population currently sits at 40,000 and some have wondered why the company would invest so much money in such a small area.

They also announced that they will be giving a total of $100 to every customer that activates new unlocked cell phones that is activated in the Vernon area through TELUS. The company was able to raise as much as $100,000 to go directly to a new branch in the Okanogan Regional Library.

The news was well received by customers in the area. It goes to show that they are a company that truly cares about their users and are willing to really put their money with their mouth is. The development of the plan to build this library was kept under their lid for the most part. This, along with the $100 cash that goes to every new customer that activates a smart phone through their network.

With the recent expansions to their network, there has never been a better time to activate an account with TELUS. They have been aggressively expanding their network and they have also lowered the prices of some of their more prominent plans in order to bring down the cost to the end user. TELUS is a company that has gone out of their way to put offers on the table that legitimately benefit their users and provide them with returns for the investment that they make in TELUS.

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