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Bell Mobility
Carriers ask Industry Canada for “spectrum fee holiday”
To say the least, System Access Fees are a touchy subject here in Canada. While the carriers sub brands have graciously waived the fees, Bell, Rogers and Telus continue charge between $6.95 to $8.95 per month. Unlike years ago when the government implemented the fees to pay for building wireless networks, this is no longer the case and brings in an estimated $1.3 billion to $1.5 billion a year in revenue for the carriers.
However there is a very small sliver of hope. The Star is reporting the big 3 have filed a request with Industry Canada to reduce the $130 million licensing fees they pay each year to access public airwaves, stating they are at a competitive disadvantage because it only costs the federal government an estimated $3.8 million to manage the public resource.
Could this mean that we will finally reap the benefits and be done with the SAF? Would these extra millions come back to us customers? Don’t start holding your breath. With the carriers filing the request to the government Keith McIntosh, director of regulatory affairs for the CWTA said “There’s an impact on the costs to the carriers, and any impact on costs reduces the available money for investment or driving down prices”. So the more the carriers pay out, the more us consumers pay the carriers. Solid business model.
The solution is this according to Bell Mobility… a “spectrum fee holiday” that would be put in place to suspend them paying millions in licensing fees each year. However, there is nowhere in the submitted documents that the millions would eventually come back to us customers. Bell spokeswoman Julie Smithers said “it was too early to say what impact a change in government policy would have on Bell’s customers, but noted there hasn’t been a direct link between the company’s $8.95 wireless system access fee and federal spectrum licensing fees for years.”
The carriers say that the SAF are in place to operate and maintain their network and upgrade their technology. Here is a thought: Wouldn’t it be really cool if every month, since the fees are not mandated by the government and go straight to the carriers bottom line and “building their network”, that us consumers got a kickback say of a certain percentage of the carriers stock a month. Essentially it’s us that is paying for the future technology and shouldn’t we be rewarded?
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6 comments for “Carriers ask Industry Canada for “spectrum fee holiday””
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All that will happen is the carriers will pull 120 million more in profit, they dont give a shit about consumers
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It’s kind of how text messaging costs the carriers nothing yet they still insist on charging more for them and justifying that it actually costs them money to send them. I guess the big 3 don’t see the irony in their own charges and rhetoric.
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The writer of this article seems to believe cellular providers function on good intentions.
Hint: They don’t. It’s all about the profits.
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“The carriers say that the SAF are in place to operate and maintain their network and upgrade their technology…”
I’m sorry, isn’t that what you use net income for, like every other business?
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Kind of a joke isn’t it? Carriers ask for free licensing but there is NO WAY they would free us from the same obligation.
Take a look at the cost to the carriers of the fees. They are collecting 1.5B but the cost is 130M. So, even if they got that break from the government and passed it on it would meant we shave *maybe* a dollar off of SAF. Yawn.
Keeping the networks up to date is a regular cost of doing business, roll the freakin SAF into the cost of the plans and stop playing around! We don’t have to pay separate machinery costs for products we buy, we don’t pay extra scissor charges for haircuts. Good grief!
BTW, text messaging does NOT cost the carriers nothing; that’s silly and naive. There is a for the system servers to accept, packetize, catalog and send the messages. Of course there is a cost, just not as high as they make it out to be.
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This is one of the many ways that the carriers here in Canada just plain suck. They all work in a closed loop market. None of them offer real benefit over the other – they all protect their market share by not effectively driving the price down… this is part of the reason why this flippin’ market needs to be cracked open.
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