At its recent business review conference, BCE announced that this spring its various subsidiaries would be hiking the fees for various products:
- Long-distance monthly network charge: $4.50 (up from $2.95).
- Bell Sympatico High Speed monthly subscription: $46.95 (up from $44.95).
- Bell ExpressVu access charge: $5.99 (up from $2.99).
We don’t subscribe to satellite TV but we are customers of Sympatico High Speed and I am not very happy about the price hike. If any reader has a recommendation for a good DSL service in the Ottawa area, please do leave a comment. I would be interested in exploring competing options.
If you are a Bell customer for long-distance, it is now doubly important to shop around. Long-distance phone service is a commodity subject to cutthroat competition and there are plenty of companies offering rock bottom per-minute charges. There is just no reason to keep paying a monthly fee.
At our household, we have been Yak’s residential long-distance service for a couple of years now. Yak, which charges no monthly fees or minimums and 3.5¢ per minute for calls to Canada and the United States, would be a good choice for long-distance service.
Related: Frugal Focus recently discussed how much legacy long-distance was costing him and how he switched providers.
FD: Though I am not a fan of their products, I do own shares in BCE (TSX: BCE). Sadly, I do think that most people never bother to check their phone bills and will keep paying monthly fees, so my dividends should be safe.
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13 responses so far ↓
1 Humble Investor // Feb 6, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Hi CC,
Have you considered downgrading to Bell’s Basic DSL service? It’s being offered now for $30/month with a 24-month contract. I’m using it at home (sometimes 2 PCs active) and find the response quite acceptable, especially considering its offered at a 36% discount to the new High Speed package pricing.
2 JB // Feb 7, 2006 at 6:51 am
Hi CC,
I use aei.ca in toronto .. $29.95/month for DSL. I’ve had very few issues. I believe you’ll need your own modem. rgds JB
3 Francois // Feb 7, 2006 at 7:17 am
I personnally use Magma (magma.ca). They are based in Ottawa and have by far the best service I have ever gotten from an ISP. They are also very fast (if you care about latency) since they are connected to many different backbones.
4 Kanwal // Feb 7, 2006 at 7:54 am
I was with Symaptico until we moved and couldn’t get
Bell to put in the phone line for 4 months (remember
their technicians were on strike this past summer).
I signed up will Rogers (DSL-lite) for $19.95 + tax.
Last week I got a notice in the mail saying they
will start charging me an extra $5/month for the
modem rental! I might be switching back to Sympatico
now that we have a phone line.
Another thing I’m considering is getting a dry-DSL
line. Dry-DSL is internet service only, you don’t
have to pay for phone service. Then using VOIP
phone service over the dry-dsl. I still have to
crunch the numbers and see what’s going to be cheaper though.
5 Joe // Feb 7, 2006 at 11:58 am
I am a Rogers high speed cable user and they are increasing my bill as well! So there isn’t anywhere to hide from the rate increases.
6 John // Feb 7, 2006 at 2:04 pm
In Ottawa you might consider National Capital Freenet (www.ncf.ca) at $29.95 per month for 3Mb/s down, 800Kb/s up, max (depends on your line) - up to 20GB per month (after that, $3/GB).
7 Canadian Capitalist // Feb 7, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Thanks everyone for your comments. I would definitely explore NCF and Magma. DSL Lite doesn’t cut it for me as I sometimes work from home.
8 Kanwal // Feb 8, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Thanks for the tip!
After reading your blog I immediately signed up
with Yak for our long distance. 3.5¢ per minute
is hard to beat, and I thought I was getting a good
deal at 5.9¢ per minute with my current provider.
9 James // Feb 8, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Just went through switching highspeed companies. I have recently switched to http://www.cyberus.ca, or another good option might be http://www.295.ca.
10 Bcool // Feb 9, 2006 at 10:51 am
You should check out http://www.cia.com. $39.99 for local phone and including Free High Speed. They offer both DSL and Cable. They’re the same company as 3web.com. If you don’t mind the super SLOW customer service then sign up with them. It took me 3 days to talk with a rep, but you can save a lot of money if you know what you’re doing.
11 JenoM // Feb 23, 2006 at 3:55 pm
Could Bcool or somebody else share their
experience on 3web’s local phone service for $39.99.
I am just in the middle of transferring my highspeed to them from Rogers, and their CIA local phone service supposed to be starting in the GTA within few weeks. (end of March ?)
Is their VOIP good enough, so I can discontinue(finally) a land phoneline from Bell ?
Thanks !
12 Trevor Larock // Oct 2, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Tried NCF, price is good but speed SLOW, I only saw 500Kbit DL ( didn’t have dsl before ), and no refund on modem etc which must be purchased. Highly dependant on phoneline to CO I guess.
Sticking with Mr Rogers, 3Mbit/s much sweeter.
13 Ali Ahmed // Oct 24, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Just call up bell during 9-5 and tell that you want to cancel.
Then wait for them to ask why and just say the price.
You can mention that rogers is offering the same service X dollars less and bell promotion to new customers is also lower than what you are paying. They should match the lower of the two and maybe through in something if you still threaten to cancel. (just check out rogers + bell’s websites for the latest rates before you call)
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