

Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada - acangiano
http://antoniocangiano.com/2009/09/06/cell-phone-cost-calculator-killed-in-canada/

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mjfern
I lived in Canada for three years and frequently called and occasionally
traveled to the United States. The Canadian cell phone plans are so overpriced
that I found it significantly cheaper to have a Verizon plan (the "North
American plan") than a Bell, Rogers, or Fido plan. This is after taking into
account the US/Canadian exchange rate when the Canadian dollar was trading at
85-90 cents per US dollar. How can it be that Verizon (arguably the most
expensive US cell carrier) offers a better priced plan than a domestic
Canadian carrier? Consider the fact that Verizon must include in its variable
costs any additional fees it has to pay to a Canadian carrier to provide
coverage on a Canadian network (Rogers or Bell).

Note that the cell plans in Canada at first glance look somewhat affordable
relative to plans available in other countries. However, the pricing for
Canadian plans is often deceptive. Not only are there additional "access fees"
and taxes (more so than in the USA), but many standard features must be
purchased a la carte, such as voicemail and caller ID.

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acangiano
> but many standard features must be purchased a la carte, such as voicemail
> and caller ID.

In the implementation I'm preparing I will take those things (Caller ID, Call
forwarding, Call waiting, voicemail, etc...) into consideration as well.

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alex_c
Why is it up to the government to make something like this?

Choosing a phone/carrier/plan in Canada is a significant pain point. If a
simple, comprehensive, and accurate tool like this existed, it would likely
become quite popular (if one does exist, I want to know about it!)

The biggest challenge - other than design - is making sure the pricing data is
complete and up to date. I'm not sure how the government project planned to
deal with this - whether they expected the carriers to cooperate (hah!), or
whether they were planning to hire people to maintain the data from publicly
available sources.

Either way, with the right structure, this could be a great project to
crowdsource. The only similar things I've seen use a blog or forum structure.

~~~
gruseom
These are some good points. Antonio, have you considered making software to
allow people to upload their phone bills? One would need to think carefully
about how to strip identifying data and demonstrate that you'd stripped it.
But that seems like a soluble problem, especially in an open source context.

If you made it easy for me to upload my bill every month and made it
transparent how the data was being scraped, I would totally do it. In fact, it
would be a pleasure to make a small contribution to genuine competition.

The telcos would sooner or later try to thwart it, but that would draw
attention to the whole endeavour.

~~~
acangiano
> Antonio, have you considered making software to allow people to upload their
> phone bills?

That's what I had in mind when I wrote my article.

There are two viable approaches. The simplest one is to ask questions about
the current or planned usage, and provide the best plans accordingly.

The second, more complex, one would be to allow a person to upload their phone
bill, parse it, analyze it and determine the most advantageous plan(s)
according to their usage patterns.

This is the most complex option because ideally it should allow for some
flexibility in terms of handling bills from different carriers, entirely
stripping the personal data (e.g., not even storing it somewhere on the
server), and so on. However, it's also the sleekest and easiest one from the
user's perspective.

It would be neat to offer both versions, this way a user could decide which
method they prefer. And from an implementation standpoint, it would make sense
to release the first method first, and then add uploading capabilities at a
later stage.

Another challenge for the project will be ensuring that the data for the plans
are up to date, but a solid effort in this regard and a good disclaimer should
be enough to make a service like this useful, honest and (hopefully) lawsuit
proof.

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gruseom
The situation - an entrenched oligopoly using government influence to continue
screwing the whole country - really is intolerable, or barely tolerable, so
it's possible that your project could attract a groundswell of support. There
must be many people in Canada who grit their teeth forking out money to these
overlords in what is supposedly a market economy. There are probably many who,
like me, have cycled through the different providers in disgust, only to find
that they're all worse than each other.

If you go through with this, I'll be interested to follow your progress. You
should probably get set up to accept donations.

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Sapient
I wrote one of these calculators in 2000 for a bank, my first paid job out of
college. I have no idea what happened with it, but it was in VB (don't ask),
and took about 2 days to write.

If I'm feeling brave later, I may have a look to see if I still have the code.

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shalmanese
Can someone explain how building this is more than a weekend project for a
talented amateur?

~~~
qw
Coding it is not difficult. The real problem is how to keep it updated.

Most of the prices are found on very unstructured web pages that are difficult
to crawl. You might even get sued if you provide incorrect information. One
possible solution is to get the companies to send you updated information
themselves, but that's not likely to happen. At least not until you get too
popular to ignore.

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electronslave
I lived in Australia.

Boy, that cell phone service sucked. Virgin cost too much and had no coverage.
Also, Telstra is an evil megacorporation kept alive with government
incentives. Also, Vodaphone seems to ignore rural Australia's existence.

I lived in Europe.

Boy, that cell phone service sucked. It cost too much and had no coverage.
Also, it required me to recharge through some obscure SIM-specific menu that
crashed my phone a bunch. Also, when I went 20 km to the west and crossed into
another country, the service mysteriously didn't work until I kept going
another 50 km and crossed into another country.

I lived in Canada.

Boy, that cell phone service sucked. Rogers is an evil megacorporation bent on
taking over Canada, charged me an arm and a leg for everything and didn't work
except when I stood on my head and prayed to the Inukshuk of reception. Also,
Bell's obsoletely fatuous CDMA network (and horrible phone selection) screwed
me over too much to mention. Also Fido is just a shill for Rogers. Also, Telus
is laughable and triple-charged me for a phone once.

Now I live in the USA.

Boy, this cell phone service sucks. AT&T has no coverage, overcharges and is
hated by everyone. Etc.

Wait, I feel like there's a pattern here.

