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Koodo website suggests switching to Telus to get 5G

The message is in a banner that appears when you look at some 5G-capable smartphones

Koodo’s website has a banner that appears when looking at 5G-capable phones that suggests customers switch to Telus if they want 5G.

It’s not clear how long this has been a thing, but I noticed it today while bouncing around carrier websites gathering pricing and pre-order info about the new iPhones. The banner says “All 5G-capable phones available from Koodo will run on our coast-to-coast 4G speed network. To access a 5G network, consider switching to Telus.”

Moreover, the banner includes two links. The first is to a page showing Koodo’s coverage, while the other links to a Telus page detailing all the benefits of 5G (and yes, benefits is doing a lot of heavy lifting there).

Koodo, of course, is a Telus flanker brand. At the moment, none of the Big Three flanker brands (such as Fido, Virgin Plus, Public Mobile, etc.) offer 5G connectivity — those who want the latest and greatest cellular network will need to go to Rogers, Bell, or Telus for now. However, the other flanker brands don’t have banners like this — at least, not yet.

Another interesting tidbit: Telus added data speed caps to its plans and to Koodo’s plans back in February. Depending on your Telus plan, your speeds will max out at either 250Mbps or 1Gbps (naturally, the more you pay, the higher your speed cap). Koodo caps speeds at 100Mbps. And yet, a couple of years ago when I had a Koodo plan, I regularly hit speeds over 300Mbps on its 4G LTE network. Curious how now that pricey 5G plans are available, 4G speeds are suddenly limited.

Moreover, 5G speeds are, well, not great in Canada. To be fair, I haven’t been able to test the new 3,500MHz spectrum yet since I don’t live in an area where it’s available, nor have I tested Telus 5G since 2019, but I’ve had Bell 5G for years and have been lucky to get anything faster than 100Mbps on it.

Several members of the MobileSyrup team have experienced pressure from Telus to make the leap from Koodo. Most recently, MobileSyrup editor-in-chief Patrick O’Rourke received a letter from Telus urging him to switch from Koodo to Telus for a plan that cost the same but had less data.

Anyway, will 5G be worth it for Canadians someday? Hopefully. But we’re still early days, and I remain skeptical of any push to get a 5G plan, especially if it comes from a banner on a wireless provider’s website.

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