TELUS’ tag line of “The Future is Friendly” was originally from CLEARNET, a company they purchased for $6.6 billion in 2000. The CLEARNET brand slowly faded away and TELUS became a Canadian wireless powerhouse. Then when all the new entrants launched, such as WIND Mobile, Mobilicity and Public Mobile, the Big 3 each decided to put a bit more focus into their sub-brands and give customers an unlimited offering. Rogers launched Chatr Wireless, Bell somewhat did the same with Solo Mobile, and TELUS brought back CLEARNET.
Over the past few months there has been much change. Rogers Chatr still operates in 6 locations (Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver), but the physical Montreal stores have shut down and have been re-branded as Fido. Bell’s Solo Mobile has stopped taking new activations, thus bridging anyone who’s interested to sign up with Bell. Now, according to the CLEARNET site they too have declared “We regret to inform you that we are no longer activating new clients.”
We’ve been informed that for the past 14 months was a trial stage to see how much interest there was in the brand, clearly not much. The focus was in both British Columbia and Alberta and offered Unlimited Talk and Text plans (no data service) for $45/month to $60/month.
There’s no official word yet on how many people signed up, but existing customers will be getting a letter in the mail and a phone call to let them know that they’ll be migrating to TELUS, plus be given a new SIM and a TELUS phone. They will be able to keep their same plan and we’re hearing that if you opted for the cell phone only plan, versus signing up for the cell plan and home phone bundle, you’ll get a price drop of $15/month… so your $45/month unlimited talk and text plan will drop to $30/month.
The end date for the CLEARNET brand, again, is expected to happen by late August or early September. We’ve reached out to TELUS for more info.
Source: CLEARNET
(Thanks Alex!)
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