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Now that both Lucky and Chatr have unlimited data, when do you think Public will get this?

savvy
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

As it was Telus initially said "no" to unlimited data for a few days when Rogers and Bell brought it out...Then they did finally cave and follow suit. Now all 3 have bumped up their unlimited data options to 512kbps overage, which is plenty to run Spotify/Deezer on High setting.

 

Chatr had unlimited data for a while at 64kbps (which is often just low enough to not run Deezer fluidly on low) and now Lucky Mobile has followed suit but upped the offering to 128kbps, which is good enough to maintain sufficient speed for fluid audio. Currently all but the $15 Lucky (voice) plan has the unlimited data.

 

So it's a slow-moving iceberg, but now that the main 2 competitors have it, when do you think reluctant-old Telus will let PM follow suit? It's becoming difficult to be a loyal holdout.

170 REPLIES 170

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

I've been considering that more and more, but ideally I'd like to stay with PM. It's disappointing they are the only of the three low end brands not doing this. 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@jor123 wrote:

Does anyone monitor the forums from marketing etc.? 


@jor123 yes, that would be @Alan_K

 

If I had a crystal ball I would predict that he would say that PM doesn't offer this at this time, but that they are always looking at ways to provide the best value to their customers, so check back often.  Something to that effect.  Am I close, Alan?  Robot LOL

 

Okay so now I'll say something he won't like as much: as I said recently (not sure if it was on this thread or another)--if you really need (or strongly want) unlimited much slower speed data, then there is nothing stopping you from moving your business to Lucky or Chatr at the end of your cycle.  That's the beauty of prepaid and no tabs, there's nothing to keep you here (unless maybe you've amassed a bunch of referrals and are getting a huge discount you don't want to give up). If enough people flew out the door for unlimited plans elsewhere*, Telus would likely be forced to respond by offering what you're asking for.  The best way is to vote with your wallet.  In the meantime, understand that PM is very much a what-you-see-is-what-you-get providers, and wishing really hard for something to change here only brings on migranes (trust me, I've had my share here).  I wish you good luck.

 

* for best effect, avoid choosing the Telus unlimited plans [and Koodo, should they change their direction and offer some] as your "elsewhere"; you have to fatten Telus' competitor's bottom lines for them to notice.


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jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Does anyone monitor the forums from marketing etc.? 


@jor123 wrote:

Sad to see there's been no comment from the @CS_Agent on this all this time. Smiley Indifferent


While Moderator_Team is mainly who members talk to about account issues, moderators do not decide on plans and promotions.  

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

accidental duplicate post

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

I've been thinking the same. For the same price, Lucky is looking like a better option for me right now. 

tehowennathe
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

If PM doesn't want to lose money from data add ons they could add unlimited plans for people who want them. For those who don't need unlimited data could have regular plans. This way PM still make money on people who need just an extra data but not unlimited because they don't use that much. 

maheshboloor
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@jor123 wrote:

Sad to see there's been no comment from the @CS_Agent on this all this time. Smiley Indifferent


@jor123 I don't think the Mod team will comment here. All we wanted is for them to take note and go to thier supervisors or whoever makes these decisions. Unfortunately it seems like PM will not do go for unlimited throttled data. I also read about Rogers had less revenue this quarter after they introduced unlimited plans. From the companys perspective, PM will probably lose revenue on data add on s if they give unlimited data. But at the same time, they should react to thier competitors. I love PM, and its been great for the 6 months I have been with them. But I am looking for deals for BF and will probably move on. I will be back when PM does have features which I personally want. 

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Sad to see there's been no comment from the @CS_Agent on this all this time. Smiley Indifferent

savvy
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Korth wrote:

@computergeek541 wrote:

@savvy wrote:


I'm actually shocked noone mentioned the fact that Sasktel has been (nearly) doing this for quite a long time, and they roam onto Bell and the like without question, and those customers aren't causing us any network problems.

The reason that no one has mentioned Sasktel likely has to do with their services only being sold in Saskatchewan. When people are looking into these price plans, they often don't look into services that aren't being offered to them.


Actually, SaskTel was mentioned, lol.

 

SaskTel services might primarily be sold only to customers in SaskTel service areas. But they can be used by anyone anywhere on the SaskTel, Telus, Bell, and (USA) AT&T networks. I doubt they really care too much about where their paying customers come from, and I doubt they can be punished (by CRTC, Telus, Bell?) for "poaching" outside their territory when their non-Saskatchewan customers come to Saskatchewan seeking them. Out-of-province customers can subscribe directly from SaskTel's own website, no shady deals with side-hussling middlemen (other than Canada Post) are necessary. 

 

Prices are higher than Public. But what you get for the prices can be well worth it.


Sorry, I stand corrected if it was mentioned before. The thread is growing! Smiley Very Happy Also I was saying the same thing - there are specific people who make it their job to get non-Saskatchewan residents onto Sasktel.

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

Sasktel is a good example of what we could have had across Canada with public infrastructure... now that MTS in Manitoba is Bell MTS, that ship has mostly sailed..


@computergeek541 wrote:

@savvy wrote:


I'm actually shocked noone mentioned the fact that Sasktel has been (nearly) doing this for quite a long time, and they roam onto Bell and the like without question, and those customers aren't causing us any network problems.

The reason that no one has mentioned Sasktel likely has to do with their services only being sold in Saskatchewan. When people are looking into these price plans, they often don't look into services that aren't being offered to them.


Actually, SaskTel was mentioned, lol.

 

SaskTel services might primarily be sold only to customers in SaskTel service areas. But they can be used by anyone anywhere on the SaskTel, Telus, Bell, and (USA) AT&T networks. I doubt they really care too much about where their paying customers come from, and I doubt they can be punished (by CRTC, Telus, Bell?) for "poaching" outside their territory when their non-Saskatchewan customers come to Saskatchewan seeking them. Out-of-province customers can subscribe directly from SaskTel's own website, no shady deals with side-hussling middlemen (other than Canada Post) are necessary. 

 

Prices are higher than Public. But what you get for the prices can be well worth it.


@savvy wrote:


I'm actually shocked noone mentioned the fact that Sasktel has been (nearly) doing this for quite a long time, and they roam onto Bell and the like without question, and those customers aren't causing us any network problems.

The reason that no one has mentioned Sasktel likely has to do with their services only being sold in Saskatchewan. When people are looking into these price plans, they often don't look into services that aren't being offered to them.

savvy
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@jor123 wrote:

@smp99 wrote:

I think they should offer the unlimited at throttled speed. My guess is that data add-on purchases would grow or people will upgrade their plans as most will become super frustrated with the slow speed.

 

What I would like to see offered is an unlimited 3G speed (3mbps on LTE). Same speed for the full plan. I would pay $100 to $125 for that. 

 


$100 for unlimited usage at 3 mbps is pretty steep. It would be hard to cause any real strain on the network at that bandwidth level, especially as more LTE bands are being rolled out and 5G eventually comes offloading more traffic & making the network more dense.


I'm actually shocked noone mentioned the fact that Sasktel has been (nearly) doing this for quite a long time, and they roam onto Bell and the like without question, and those customers aren't causing us any network problems.

 

See https://www.whistleout.ca/CellPhones/Guides/best-unlimited-data-plans ....

 

They've done unlimited 2Mbps for $90 for a while, and there are even people out there that have their job as a side-hustle to sneak non-Sasktel area users into this lucrative plan outside of their main client base. It's a little shady, but I don't blame them. The fact is, with the advent of 5G multiplying many times over our existing bandwidth capacity, I dare say it will no longer be a question of congestion, and merely a question of convenience and greed.

savvy
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@srlawren wrote:

@GinYVR wrote:

 

Unlimited additional data at reduced speeds of up to 128 Kbps for email, light browsing and messaging once you have exceeded your allotted 3G data.


@GinYVR 128 Kbps is roughly double the old dial-up speeds of 56 Kbps... it would have to be some very light browsing to be even remotely usable at that speed. 


Speaking from experience here... Dial-Up averaged around ~3 to ~3.14 KBps OR 24-25Kbps at my address by comparison. I had Dial-Up even as late as around 4 years ago, so I really remember. On the other hand, my real-world throughput testing has pegged Lucky's 128kbps at exactly the 128kbps or 16KBps, varying mostly between 120 and 140 kbps. This means it can and does sustain over 5 times the actual rate of dial-up, not double. The main reason for this is, unlike Chatr, Lucky uses 4G and is throttled to that speed. There isn't a pile of congestion and the path can handle more load than you need, whereas Dial-Up is capped at 56kbps and the poor lines means you will never get that. By having much more available overhead to compensate compared with Dial-Up and Chatr, Lucky pretty-much gives you a rock solid 128kbps. For literally everything but Video, or higher quality audio, it's fine. Even web browsing isn't seriously impactful, if you don't mind waiting 0.5-2 seconds instead of 0.1-0.5 seconds for a page to load. So it's quite a bit futher from the Dial-Up train speeds, lol.

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@stonechucker wrote:

Until Public Mobile says they will have unlimited plans for data, they will tell us.  There is no use in discussing this further.


What's wrong with discussing it? Isn't that what the forums are here for? 

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@smp99 wrote:

 

What I would like to see offered is an unlimited 3G speed (3mbps on LTE). Same speed for the full plan. I would pay $100 to $125 for that. 



@jor123 wrote:


$100 for unlimited usage at 3 mbps is pretty steep. It would be hard to cause any real strain on the network at that bandwidth level, especially as more LTE bands are being rolled out and 5G eventually comes offloading more traffic & making the network more dense.


@smp99 @jor123 here's the problem:  if people could get unlimited 3Mbps speed data at PM for anything that was a "reasonable" amount (i.e. not hundredS of dollars a month or something), then a very large number [more profitable] Telus and Koodo customers would leave those tiers.  We saw this in the Fall 2016 promo*, and that's the reason we have yet to see any further industry-leading plans from PM since then and the reason they are either content or forced to just mirror Chatr and Lucky now.  

 

* for anyone that wasn't around back then:  PM offered a promo plan that was a 90 day plan with 12GB of full-speed data along with unlimited province-wide talk and unlimited international texting for $120, or about $40/month for an average of about 4GB of full-speed data (though you had the flexibility to use that 12GB any way you you wanted during the full 90 days).  There was a massive influx of new customers, not just from competitors but also from Telus' own brands as well.  


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smp99
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@stonechucker wrote:

Until Public Mobile says they will have unlimited plans for data, they will tell us.  There is no use in discussing this further.


I would have to disagree with that. We keep the discussion going to let PM know that this is still top of mind for many.

 

 

Until Public Mobile says they will have unlimited plans for data, they will tell us.  There is no use in discussing this further.

smp99
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

It's likely not going to happen. Rogers just reported 3qtr results. Infinite plans adoption was over 1million accounts, 3 times the expected rate. This lead to a decrease in service revenue because of the decrease in data-overage charges. Overall revenue was stable when you include cable.  Stock drop yesterday was biggest since 2016, about 5.5%

 

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/rogers-communications-reports-third-quarter-110005482.html

 

Quote:

Revenue
Total revenue was stable this quarter and total service revenue decreased by 1%, largely driven by a 2% decrease in Wireless service revenue. The Wireless service revenue decrease was primarily a result of the faster-than-expected subscriber adoption of our new Rogers Infinite unlimited data plans and the related decrease in overage revenue and an elevated competitive market environment.

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@smp99 wrote:

I think they should offer the unlimited at throttled speed. My guess is that data add-on purchases would grow or people will upgrade their plans as most will become super frustrated with the slow speed.

 

What I would like to see offered is an unlimited 3G speed (3mbps on LTE). Same speed for the full plan. I would pay $100 to $125 for that. 

 


$100 for unlimited usage at 3 mbps is pretty steep. It would be hard to cause any real strain on the network at that bandwidth level, especially as more LTE bands are being rolled out and 5G eventually comes offloading more traffic & making the network more dense.

maheshboloor
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@smp99 wrote:

What I would like to see offered is an unlimited 3G speed (3mbps on LTE). Same speed for the full plan. I would pay $100 to $125 for that. 

 


@smp99 I personally think this will never happen with any carrier (even outside Canada). Although i would love if it did. This would lead to massive abuse of data and might lead to de-prioritization n congestion. For comparison, tmobile allows customers upto 50gb at full speed and throttle them once they go above it.

smp99
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

I think they should offer the unlimited at throttled speed. My guess is that data add-on purchases would grow or people will upgrade their plans as most will become super frustrated with the slow speed.

 

What I would like to see offered is an unlimited 3G speed (3mbps on LTE). Same speed for the full plan. I would pay $100 to $125 for that. 

 

jor123
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@Korth wrote:

@jor123 wrote:

I think the issue came up a few years ago when Videotron decided to allow Spotify, etc. to not consume your data allowance. I'm not saying it's a bad thing in this instance, but it can be a touchy subject when a particular service (even internal) is not treated the same as another. 


Other providers offered "unlimited" Data before Lucky did, without any history of free-Spotify services.

 

I also doubt any special dedicated audio-streaming hardware was ever built into Videotron's network.

And compare vs Telus (and Koodo and Public) network which *does* have built-in transcoding hardware for "wireless video experience optimization"... I very much doubt any Telus company would ever offer free video streaming simply because they already have the hardware installed. 


That had nothing to do with Videotron having any "dedicated audio-streaming hardware" - they simply chose to exclude traffic from Spotify and a few other services from using up alloted data on their customers' plans (putting those services at an advantage over others). That was the core of the issue - that 1 GB of data for example isn't really 1 GB of data when you could use Spotify for hours and not "consume" any data as far as billing was concerned, whereas doing the same thing with another not zero-rated service would. 


@maheshboloor wrote:

@will13am It's been over 2 months since lucky n chatr announced. Still nothin from PM.


I remain hopeful but not holding my breath of course.

maheshboloor
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@will13am It's been over 2 months since lucky n chatr announced. Still nothin from PM.

maheshboloor
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@GinYVR wrote:

@srlawrenYup but that's the text from Lucky's web page. I am fine with Public Mobile having the fixed amount of data, especially since I am on Roger's plan for work.


@GinYVR here's the thing, adding unlimited throttled data has absolutely no downside for us customers. If you don't want to use slow throttled data, u don't have to use it. You can always renew your plan or buy the, may I say ridiculously priced, 1 gb data add on. For most ppl the fact tht u can still be online after u have used up your data - most times for me atleast its the last 1 or 2 days of my bill cycle. This helps me be connected to my family n friends over messaging apps and don't have to shell out extra money for it.

@srlawrenYup but that's the text from Lucky's web page. I am fine with Public Mobile having the fixed amount of data, especially since I am on Roger's plan for work.

128kbps is also the nominal maximum. Actual performance sometimes briefly surges faster, more often it struggles with being slower. Depends on how quickly and how efficiently the network can compensate during always-changing real conditions.

srlawren
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@GinYVR wrote:

 

Unlimited additional data at reduced speeds of up to 128 Kbps for email, light browsing and messaging once you have exceeded your allotted 3G data.


@GinYVR 128 Kbps is roughly double the old dial-up speeds of 56 Kbps... it would have to be some very light browsing to be even remotely usable at that speed. 


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