Just got a letter from Rogers telling me that they are "continually investing in technology", and must increase my home phone monthly fee by $3/month, or about 10% more than what I was paying before.
Just off the top of my head, 4 reasons why this is ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS:
- The Rogers Home Phone service has NEVER been upgraded in any way that I've noticed. The features themselves (voicemail, caller ID, etc.) have all been around for 10+ years. Whatever capital costs they incurred to deploy it are almost certainly paid off by now. I'm guessing it's all gravy at this point.
- The amount of network resources required to route low-bandwidth voice calls is MINISCULE. I would be surprised if it costs Rogers more than $2 or $3 /month to provide this service to me. Including connection fees to other phone networks.
- Rogers is making a healthy profit, thankyouverymuch, and operates in one of the least competitive telecom markets in the World. Don't talk to me about "business necessities".
- In a World where Skype can sell me minutes for either FREE or less than $0.03 (and dropping), are they TRYING to get me off of their phone service?
We only keep a landline because we have kids and want to make sure we always have at least one working way to call 9-1-1, but this is getting stupid. With all of the various associated fees, we're at about $40/month plus taxes for this "in case of emergency" service.
Time to shop around. Primus looks like it has some good deals right now...
If you're ditching Robbers, give TekSavvy a try. They're awesome!
Posted by: Carson B | January 15, 2010 at 10:10 PM