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CWTA on canned Rate Plan Calculator: “The minister made the right decision”

By on September 1, 2009 at 7:45am in Asides, Mobile News, Various News

rate-plan-calcYesterday we wrote about how our taxpayer dollars were spent by our Government to create a “Cellphone Rate Plan Calculator”. This was due to launch back in June was the idea was squashed due to “technical limitations”. The idea is a good one and apparently the reason it was canned was that the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), Bell Canada and TELUS met with Industry minister Clement’s office and voiced their hesitation, crying it would promote lower-cost plans… and the project was shelved.

However, our Government officials are speaking up about the backlash. Industry Minister spokesperson Laryssa Waler said the “Which Cell Plan? A calculator” project halted due to technical issues and not the reasons of the CWTA, Bell or TELUS.

Waler said “Technical limitations prevented the officials from building a tool at this time that captures the full spectrum of offerings available to consumers in the cellphone marketplace. The proposed calculator design only considered voice communications and text messaging. As this is an industry with ever-evolving elements, such as bundles, data and seasonal offerings, it made it highly improbable to ensure that Canadians were being presented with current and relevant data.”

TELUS has yet to give their viewpoint on the situation, but Mark Langton of Bell has spoken up said they did not lobby against the project and said “There was no separate or unique Bell effort. Geist insinuates in his column that Bell had talked to Clement or his office about the subject. We did not.”

The CWTA has confirmed a meeting did take place regarding the rate calculator. Bernard Lord, President & CEO of the CWTA said the calculator was “flawed since it did not take into account data plans, bundle discounts and hardware subsidies offered by carriers”… in addition, “the minister made the right decision, to not continue to dump good taxpayer money into a tool that was ineffective.”

So there you have it. Is this the end of the government funded rate plan calculator saga? Probably not as us consumer could really use something like this, especially with all the newly created wireless competition coming on board.

Via: CBC

Related posts:

  1. Government driven Price Plan Calculator squashed due to “technical limitations”
  2. Industry Minister Jim Prentice asks CEO’s of Bell and Telus to explain incoming text message charges
  3. Bell to release “Enhanced 1GB BlackBerry & Windows Mobile rate plan”, includes tethering
  4. Nokia “Handwriting Calculator” application

Discussion

8 comments for “CWTA on canned Rate Plan Calculator: “The minister made the right decision””

  1. There are already plenty of these available from the private sector…why on earth would this be a valid spend aside from a make-work project?

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    Posted by Devon | September 1, 2009, 9:10 am
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  2. and they did not see the complications of bundles and changing plans coming how? oh right, they don’t pay for their phone plans, our tax dollars do.

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    Posted by julienrl | September 1, 2009, 9:14 am
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  3. I don’t see how customers finding lower cost plans is a bad thing, well unless you are one of the cell companies. But this gives them the opportunity to possibly build a bigger customer base.

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    Posted by theninjasquad | September 1, 2009, 9:27 am
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  4. DEVON, can you share some of your links to these private sector rate plan calculators? I can’t find any through google…

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    Posted by Nuelo | September 1, 2009, 9:46 am
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  5. Best buy has a very nice plan calculator with voice, data, voice and data and many more types of plans on their website. how come best buy can make one but our goverment did not have the ability to make one with 60 thousand dollars we the ppl gave them?

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    Posted by ahhhh | September 1, 2009, 11:32 am
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  6. Best Buy calculator is totally worthless. It does not cover most of the Maritimes and what it does attempt to cover says nothing about sneaky fees like 911, call display, etc. For Halifax nothing is said about “carrier fees” on Bell and Rogers. If anyone knows of a decent plan calculator, please let us know.

    Once again the CRTC has failed to work for the Canadian public. They should simply disappear.

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    Posted by toyandme | September 1, 2009, 5:40 pm
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  7. In other words, the Government, the masters of making s**t more complicated than it needs to be, couldn’t make this calculator work because all the various plans and options were too complicated?

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    Posted by Sid Ali | September 2, 2009, 9:40 pm
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  8. In the CBC article, one would find that proper market research was actually done on the tool, and regular people (from the maritimes!) said they would use it.

    The feds also do similar comparative work with banks that I’ve found invaluable, such as credit card foreign exchange fees (Desjardins is best).

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    Posted by Dan | September 2, 2009, 11:42 pm
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