Rogers bought us

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

phone junkee wrote:
>
> Is there a possibility that a foreign GSM company can outbid Rogers? Or
> does CRTC have regulations against that too?

I believe that foreign ownership caps are still in place. and it is Industry
Canada, not the CRTYC which regulates cellular service. CRTC only imposes
stuff like the 911 fees.

 

[nobody]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

Joseph wrote:
> So what you're saying is Rogers is lying, eh? Do you work for Rogers
> so you know that they couldn't possibly be telling the truth?

Again: If Rogers wanted to be competitive and drive prices down, they would
have offered no contracts, per second billing, city fido equivalent under the
Rogers brand. You don't need to buy another network to be competitive, you
just need to update config files in your billing software.

Rogers is buying Microcell for a couple of reasons:
-pressure from its bankers so the later can offload their MCELL shares
-access to Microcell's spectrum
-cheap way to acquire Fido customers.


Fido won't disapear overnight. It takes time to integrate 2 networks, billing
software, accounting etc. Ted Rogers may have said it takes just a minute to
enable roaming. Perhaps. But he isn't spending 1.4 billion to do just that.
He's going to see cost savings potential by merging call centres, merging
administrative functions, eliminating duplicate software licences and support
costs in IT and network equipment etc etc etc etc etc etc.

Consider that Rogers has just spent megabucks buying back the stock from its
former parent AT&T, it had no choice since Cingular didn't want to hold on to
it, and nobody else was there to buy those shares. Rogers will spend an extra
1.6 billion to get Microcell from its own cash reserves as well as money
borrowed from banks (one more reason banks are happy to have Rogers buy
Microcell since they not only get their money back from sale of Microcell
shares, but will collect interest on Roger's higher debt).

All this to say that Rogers will be under tremendous pressure to make this
merger pay a good dividend. And this means streamlininng operations to the
max, and certaintly no incentives to lower prices.

Rogers may retask "Fido" to be used as a pre-paid product name, with Rogers
used for post-paid services. But in the end, Rogers will eliminate Microcell
from the picture and will force Fido customers to move to Rogers
price/contract schemes.

While Fido may complete some promotions/projects already in the pipeline,
expect to see very few new projects actually start from now on, especially if
the merger is approved shortly.

Big question mark is whether Fido will spend megabucks to upgrade Ottawa and
Montreal to have City Fido. From what I had heard, Montreal was to have had
City Fido by mid 2005.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

In article <41519198$1@news.accesscomm.ca>,
"Jim MacKenzie" <jim@dusykbarlow.sk.ca> wrote:

> "Steven Fisher" <sdfisher@spamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:sdfisher-22FD77.12051021092004@news.va.shawcable.net...
> > Rogers may have wider coverage in more areas, but at least in BC their
> > coverage is extremely shallow. Dropped calls and poor quality are the
> > name of the game with Rogers.
>
> At what frequency? If you have a GSM 1900 (or 900/1800/1900) phone, this
> wouldn't be surprising. If you have a GSM 850/1900 phone, this would be
> surprising indeed.

To be honest, I'm not sure. It was the phone Rogers sold me, a Sony
Ericcson T68i.

--
Steven Fisher; sdfisher@spamcop.net
"Morituri Nolumus Mori."

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

> Big question mark is whether Fido will spend megabucks to upgrade Ottawa
and
> Montreal to have City Fido. From what I had heard, Montreal was to have
had
> City Fido by mid 2005.

The above comment proves you don't know what the hell your talking about..
If you had pin pointed the timing correctly, well.. that would have added
some weight to your comments, but ya didn't..

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

BTW, i looked at both www.sec.com and www.sedar.com (canadian equivalent) and
all that has been officially listed so far are the press releases from
rogers/microcell encased inside legalese SEC filing data.

The real stuff is supposed to be available within 10 business days of the announcement.

Also, Rogers needs 2/3 of Microcell shares to be tendered for this to go ahead.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

I guess that means that it is the end of lower priced plans, billing
by the second and unlimited GPRS plans within a few years after Rogers
has actually taken over Fido.

I've had my problems with Rogers (they over billed me a few times and
when I complained, they informed me that they would investigate it and
get back to me). Of course they investigated it and got back to me (in
my favour) but it was a constant overbilling of under $5.00 each month
and I had to call them each month to complain about this. They told me
that it was because my plan was no longer offered and their billing
system was having problems billing me under my plan. This happened for
the last 5 months that I had their "special" plan and happened over 5
years ago (before they switched to GSM). Once my contract finished, I
cancelled and switched to Fido.

Between the Telus buyout and the Rogers buyout, even though I've had
negative experiences with Rogers and have never experienced Telus,
I'll take Rogers. With the Rogers buyout at least I'm certain that I
can keep using my unlocked GSM Treo 600. With the Telus buyout, they
would probably try to migrate me to a cheap CDMA phone since there are
no guarantees that they will maintain Fido's GSM network.




/Jim

tfortony@yahoo.com (tony) wrote in message news:<3da583ae.0409200534.1f14d5a2@posting.google.com>...
> In case you haven't heard, looks like Fido is agreeing to it:
>
> <http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2004/09/20/rogers_040920.html>
>
> I certainly hope City|Fido stays in tact, as does Fido's current voice
> mail with instant reply. I have Roger's vm system. I'm guessing if
> this gets finalized this year, not a lot will change in the first half
> of 2005, but then, who knows? 🙁
>
> Maybe Rogers will change over some of their system's to Fido's plans
> and vm, which would be good for us and them.
>
> .:. tony

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

If my memory is correct, Fido was the first company in Canada to offer
billing by the second. After awhile the other companies followed suit
but one by one they went back to billing by rounding up to the next
minute (and for almost all of them, the time actually starts when your
phone rings, not when you pick up your phone for incoming calls while
for outgoing calls the timer starts after you hit "send" and get a
connection as long as the person on the other end picks up). I believe
that Rogers' billing by the second when they actually had it, started
after the first minute. I'm not sure if this was because they had an
option for the first incoming minute free.

I hope that Fido stays around because consumers need more competition
and not less.

Let's not forget that one of the main reasons why Telus and Rogers
want to buy Fido is to reduce the number of players on the market
especially when that player (i.e. Fido) is the one that is offering
innovative plans like unlimited incoming, CityFido, unlimited GPRS,
billing by the second, etc.




/Jim

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@teksavvy.com> wrote in message news:<414F764E.20BD5548@teksavvy.com>...
> Jim MacKenzie wrote:
> > I'm hoping Rogers decides to keep Fido's low long distance rate and billing
> > by the second - it could do some serious damage to Telus, Bell, Aliant,
> > SaskTel, MTS, etc. if it did.
>
> If Rogers chose not to have per-second billing, it is because it felt it had
> no competitive need to do so, and buying Fido will even further reduce this
> small need.
>
>
> Roger's purchase of Fido will end up the same as Telus' purchase of Clearnet,
> if it is allowed to go though: Fido's brand will disapear, Rogers may
> integrate some of the former marketing )for instance the dog theme) into its
> own ads, but Fido rates will no longter be offered to new customers and little
> by little, Rogers will stop grandfathering existing ex-Fido customers' rates.
>
> If this is allowed to go through, within 1.5 years, expect to start getting
> nice letters giving you some sweet deal to move to a Rogers plan with the
> first couple months at reduced reate, and following months at the good old
> expensive Rogers prices.

 

[Joseph]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

On 26 Sep 2004 07:17:20 -0700, invalid_jimpoon@canada.com (Jim Poon)
wrote:

>With the Telus buyout, they
>would probably try to migrate me to a cheap CDMA phone since there are
>no guarantees that they will maintain Fido's GSM network.

There are no guarantees in life except that you'll eventually die!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

"Jim Poon" <invalid_jimpoon@canada.com> wrote in message
news:480ea63d.0409260633.752d5205@posting.google.com...
> If my memory is correct, Fido was the first company in Canada to offer
> billing by the second.

SaskTel Mobility (then SaskTel Cellular) had billing by the second in
1988-89, as did Rogers (then Cantel). It did go away for awhile, though.

My current Rogers plan has billing by the second, although there is a
one-minute minimum.

Jim