Telus has followed its Big Three counterparts, Rogers and Bell, in implementing price increases across its entire plan lineup.
According to internal documents obtained by MobileSyrup, Telus cites “economic and market conditions” for raising the price of its Your Choice plans by $5 each starting Thursday, January 21st.
Similar to Bell, which separates out the base cost of service — including call, text, voicemail and call display — from its shared data buckets, Telus will be tacking on $5 to its Smartphone and Premium Smartphone tiers. For example, a customer purchasing an iPhone 6s or Galaxy Note 5 on a 2-year contract will now pay $65 per month instead of $60 for the base cost of service, along with the data bucket assigned to that primary number.
Telus also plans to match Rogers and Bell in weakening the attraction for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) customers by raising the price of base service $10. For example, a customer that purchases an unlocked Nexus 5X from Google and signs up for a call plan with unlimited nationwide calling will now pay $50 per month instead of $40. Fortunately, that price is still $5 cheaper than what Bell and Rogers plan to charge for the same price tier.
Elsewhere, Telus plans to eliminate its popular $20/500 megabyte shared data tier, as it is finding most customers interested in the $25/1GB or $35/2.5GB options.
As with other carriers, Telus’s price increases applies to all provinces except Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where, due to increased competition from regional incumbents Videotron, SaskTel and MTS respectively, prices remain considerably lower.
MobileSyrup has also learned that Koodo, Telus’s flanker brand, will be raising prices by $5 across all of its plans except for those that fall under the Tab Plus category, which are generally more expensive already because they factor in a larger device subsidy. These changes, like those from Telus, will come into effect on January 21st.
These price increases will only affect new customers, or those upgrading their existing plans.
According to the CRTC’s 2015 Communications Monitoring Report, in 2014 Rogers, Telus and Bell together controlled 89 percent of Canada’s wireless market, down from 90 percent the year earlier.
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