Update: Bell officially drops SAF & 911 Fees

For those who are Bell, or want to be on Bell the good news is that they have dropped the monthly $6.95 System Access Fees and the $0.75 Carrier 911 Fees. There will be no formal announcement but you’ll notice on the Bell site that the fees are removed from the plans.

The dropped fees are only good for new, upgrading or migrating clients. For those who are current customers and want their fees dropped you’ll have to switch over to a new plan in which Bell has also changed to be more competitive (they’ve also now included call forwarding) and from what we can tell have been increased by $5.

UPDATE: We finally got more info on the dropped fees:
According to the internal doc (Thanks Informer!) here are the details:

“Effective November 20, 2009, Bell is simplifying billing and saving money for our clients by eliminating SAF and carrier 911 fees from the following price plan groups:
• Consumer Share price plans
• Small Business Share price plan
• Consumer U760 Turbo Stick Flex Plan
• Turbo Stick Card price plans
• Corporate price plans
• Smartphone Combo price plans
• Smartphone Combo Share price plans
• Modem price plans
o Tracking
o Vertical data
• Combo price plans for iPhone – shared and single user
• Uber price plans and Atlantic Uber price plans
• Value $25 price plan
• North America price plan
• Fab 10 Student Plans Exclusive to Dalhousie University
• BlackBerry BIS data only PPs
• PDA data only PPs
• PDA data only shareable PPs
• BlackBerry BIS data only shareable PPs
• BlackBerry BES PPs
• BlackBerry BES Shareable PPs

As a result, clients activating on these plans will now only see one monthly charge on their bill – the cost of their price plan – instead of 3 individual charges.

Changes to plans include:
• SAF and carrier 911 fees being removed (a savings of $7.70).
• Call Forwarding being included on Consumer and Small Business plans (a $3 value)
• The monthly fee increasing by $5 to $10 depending on the price plan
• Provincial government imposed 911 fees will still apply

In addition, there is a $5 price increase on 2 BlackBerry BIS and PDA smartphone SOCs.

Impacts to existing clients:
• SAF and carrier 911 fees are not being waived for existing clients on their current price plan. However, existing clients can migrate to an in-market “no SAF or 911” price plan with no restrictions (i.e. no contract renewal required; no migration fee). Advise migrating clients that they will forfeit the benefits and features of their existing price plan.
• As always, if a client calls in and requests a rate plan review, continue to apply your better value migration tactics.
• Clients migrating to the new plans will be charged the $2 paper bill fee unless they register for ebill and suppress their paper bill.
• Existing clients will continue to be able to renew on their current plan as it exists.