The Telecom Delemma

Currently, my cellphone provider is Bell, a national CDMA telecom business. Bell’s influence even reaches my corner of Canada, although under a different name. In Atlantic Canada, the big telecom business is Aliant, which is is pretty much Bell under a different name. You’d think that by essentially being the same company, that it’d be easy to switch between the two. This is not the case.

Last time I switched to Bell from Aliant, the customer representatives had no idea what was going on, and it took many hops between the two carriers to get my contact onto Bell. Normally that would be fine, but every 4 months I switch in and out of Aliant and Bells areas. In the fall, I just kept my bell number back in Ottawa, a mere 1,000km away, because I really don’t use my cellphone when I have a land line.

In an effort to try and stay with the same company, I wanted to try Telus, which is consistently available all through Canada, plus has the advantage of already being CDMA, which one would think would be easy to switch my Bell/Aliant phone to Telus. Once again, I am easily foiled, as today, they inform me that I have to get a new phone with them, as the two systems are incompatible. The hitch is that I wanted to go with Pay as you Go, as I really don’t use my phone that much, so lots of my minutes get wasted. This means that I would need to buy a $400 phone outright, which obviously, if you’re trying to save money, is no good.

Why not just switch between Aliant and Bell on Pay as you go? Because there’s the pesky $35 activation fee, and probably a cancellation fee. But wait, you say, what about GSM?

The only GSM provider in Canada, Rogers, is probably one of the worst companies to deal with. I completely flat out refuse to get a cellphone through them. I’ve heard bad stores about them, and even I have had issues dealing with them (about their internet).

I may end up just canceling my cellphone for the time being, and just using a land line until I get back in Ottawa, and then going with Pay as you Go for those 4 months, rinse and repeat.