Cell Phones

Collective Bargaining for Cell Phone plans

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  • Aug 24th, 2017 2:46 pm
Jr. Member
Jul 28, 2009
195 posts
213 upvotes

Collective Bargaining for Cell Phone plans

Canada has the worst cell phone plans in the world. We're also the most profitable ARPU in the world: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/peter-nowa ... 02174.html

Has anyone tried or ever considered creating a collective bargaining group that can actually hold some leverage against the Big 3 by facilitating and coordinating what a large group of customers do? It's not an MVNO but strictly a consumer group. A Cell Phone plan union if you will...
5 replies
Deal Fanatic
Apr 5, 2016
6116 posts
4613 upvotes
Calgary/Vancouver
If you start one I'll join.
Deal Expert
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Nov 28, 2013
21330 posts
10938 upvotes
Oakville
It's a great idea, in theory, but I dread the thought of trying to organize it.

1 - it'd have to be a huge number of people
2 - you'd have to have guarantees from every single one of those people that they would sign up for the contract that you negotiated

If you don't have both of those things, carriers won't even *think* about talking to you.
Deal Expert
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Jun 3, 2005
28753 posts
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PunkeyDoodles Corner…
It's called corporate plans.

Sadly, nothing else. :(

instead of looking at it from a negative, look at it from a capitalistic profitability vantage. Canada is the most profitable for wireless Telco's., WORLDWIDE. LOL....Yayyy....now how to get a piece of that pie?
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Jr. Member
Jul 28, 2009
195 posts
213 upvotes
wearysky wrote: It's a great idea, in theory, but I dread the thought of trying to organize it.

1 - it'd have to be a huge number of people
2 - you'd have to have guarantees from every single one of those people that they would sign up for the contract that you negotiated

If you don't have both of those things, carriers won't even *think* about talking to you.
Certainly, the logistics are the hardest part. But I actually don't see this being much different then the companies that buy bandwidth from the big boys. The fundamental difference is as a service it's a chicken and egg problem. Who can I convince to join first? The customer or the companies? I think the customers are the easiest target since we are effectively fed up with the state of things. All I'd need is to show interest for a service with a small monthly fee where people can sign up and agree to provide me the right to be the exclusive negotiator for their cell phone service (definitely challenging to pull off, but really what are the other options?).
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May 8, 2009
15560 posts
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Going to the Moon
@rafiki6 your idea won't get you far. As we know from other markets (example UK), the only way to get the big three to drop consumer pricing across the board is by mandating tarifs for MVNO's. There are many threads on RFD about "deals", and ultimately what you do is your business.

No dice on MVNO's any time soon, as the CRTC is not ready for that.

What we know:
  • If you don't know what you're doing, you'll pay top dollar for wireless. Carriers rake a good margin on expensive rate plans, overage and roaming charges, as well as locking customers in at the King's ransom
  • Based on this, carriers also offer big activation incentives (often gift cards, account credits, accessories) to lure customers in
  • There are region-specific plans and deals including market dumping
  • There are corporate plans, either based on large accounts or pre-negotiated between one carrier and one organization, and they too come with their kinks (might pay less on base monthly rate, but less deals on roaming or other add-ons)
  • Some people try to beat the system by roaming on foreign carriers (US, MX), that's a huge YMMV, some use data-only plans and do their talk & text via an app, some go with carrier options with 3G data throttling or zoning restrictions in exchange for cheaper monthly plans
A bunch of users on RFD does not consist of an organization, so I don't see your suggestion going anywhere.

@rafiki6 no offense to you but I rather negotiate with the carriers I deal with myself. I see no benefit to paying you a fee to negotiate on my behalf. The deals we get that are posted on this forum are worth it for consumers to work out on their own, not to pay someone to do it for them. Heck, the points I brought up in this post are known to most who post in the Cellphones section of RFD forum. You're fishing in the wrong pond.
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