Something really cool fell into my lap on Friday. After dealing with a lame old phone that couldn't hold a charge for more than seven minutes of talking, I was able to replace it with a lovely HTC Touch, already upgraded to Windows Mobile 6.1. It's truly a lovely phone, and using it is ever so enjoyable.

I wish I could say the same about my service provider, Telus, but I can't.

Up here in beautiful, frozen Canada, we have three primary service providers for mobile communications: Telus, Rogers, and Bell. There are a number of smaller players in the market, but none of them own their own network, instead backing onto one of the big three. This, of course, gives us a classic oligopoly, devoid of any real competition. The offerings of the three providers aren't all that much different, in terms of offerings or prices.

Taking a look at the smartphone plans offered by Telus, we see they offer three packages, priced at $20, $30, and $45 dollars. These are all add-ons to voice plans of no less than $25/month, before service charges and other rip-offs that the telcos use to scam their customers. Perhaps that's not too big an issue, though, considering the only people who have plans with a lower monthly rate than that are people like me who've been Telus customers for two years.

My base plan is actually $17.50/month, but thanks to a $10/month add-on which provides me with 75 minutes of discounted long distance (25¢ per minute, as opposed to the regular 35¢ rate), I qualify for the smartphone plans. Shortly after I went to a contract back in April 2007, my base plan was discontinued; had I not renewed my contract before April, a new contract wouldn't have the option of retaining the old plan.

So now let's look at those smartphone plans in more detail. Mine is the Smartphone 20 "bundle", which means for unlimited e-mail, IM & text messaging, but no data, I pay $20 a month. (Oh, I also get 10 voice mail messages and call display. Before the smartphone bundle, I had to pay $7/month for three messages.) When I got the Smartphone 20 package, the rep at the Telus store informed me that web browsing or other data usage would be charged at 5¢ per kilobyte (yes, you read that correctly).

If I had more money that I could spend each month on the phone, I could go up to the Smartphone 30 plan. This gives me web browsing and "video streaming" along with e-mail and IM, but I'm limited to no more than 500MB for all of that combined (with an 3¢/MB overage rate). The Smartphone 45 bundle removes the limit, at the cost of another $15 per month.

While I've been railing at Telus for most of the post so far, I'd just like to point out that Bell and Rogers aren't really any better. Rogers only now has brought their plans in line with the offerings from Bell and Telus, but they still limit users to 500MB no matter what. And Bell's plans are pretty close to the combos that can be thrown together with a Telus contract.

While more competition isn't always a cure for these sorts of problems, I believe that in this case, the construction of new networks by other players in the market, or even opening the Canadian mobile market to American companies, might actually help bring in lower costs and plans that are much more fair to Canadians.

Something needs to be done, sooner rather than later, to bring market freedom to Canadian mobile communications. To free us from the triumvirate of Bell, Telus and Rogers.

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