Telecom Trends

Bell Canada has announced an unlimited mobile data plan for $75 per month. Details are available on the Bell website.

The plan is designed for wireless connection cards operating on Bell's EVDO Rev A high speed mobile network, offering peak upload speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps and peak download speeds of up to 3.1 Mbps and covering about 70% of the Canadian population. The small print says that Bell's acceptable use policies apply, meaning you agree not to use you device in a manner that "consumes excessive network capacity in Bell's reasonable opinion, or causes our network, or our ability to provide services to others, to be adversely affected."

A clause that will raise eyebrows is that you also agree not to use the service "for multi-media streaming, voice over Internet protocol or any other application which uses excessive network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell." Well, so much for unlimited service!

These restrictions seem to conflict with some of the freedom that is promoted in the press release and may be artifacts of an older acceptable use policy. I'll post an update if Bell lets me know that these restrictions no longer apply.

System access fees apply, so the monthly cost is actually $84, but this a dramatic improvement in data services affordability.

How will other carriers respond?

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Update [October 24, 10:50 am]
Today's NY Times includes a story about Verizon settling a case with the NY attorney general's office. According to the story, New York found that Verizon Wireless had marketed certain mobile internet plans as “unlimited,” without disclosing that actions like downloading movies and playing games online were prohibited.

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Bell, EVDO