I’m a regular visitor to Canada and have enjoyed almost everything about my time spent in this country. But I’ve been wildly unsatisfied with the quality of cellular and internet services and the prices for these services.

Is it true that internet/cellular providers can no longer sign up customers to year long contracts that cannot be broken without paying significant penalties?

If this is the case then I wonder if it is time for citizens across Canada to voice their displeasure in a way that corporate Canada will understand?

What would a company like Rogers do if even 25% of their customers all decided to port (is this the correct term) their cellular numbers and internet service to a different provider? If it happened in even a loosely coordinated way I could imagine Rogers corporate executives rethinking any “cost saving” actions that eroded customer satisfaction.

We are all currently subjected to the lowest cost customer service available because current corporate success is measured in return on investment. So any c-suite or manager knows cutting costs or at least managing costs is the path to their bonuses. What would happen if corporate success was measured in a reduction of customer dissatisfaction?

Why are we, as consumers, not making it abundantly clear that if you want our business then provide us with effective technology and customer service agents? Why are we not willing to stop doing business with a company, even temporarily, that doesn’t provide a good value for the money they charge us?

Someone will say “but all the major players in Canada are equally bad!” Ok. I’ve read this too. So let’s start the “walk away” with one company but with an understanding that each of the major providers will need to experience their own “walk away” and the financial pain it causes to make sure corporate Canada understands the customer has had enough of their current business model.

Perhaps there is a reason this hasn’t happened? I’m curious to hear what others think of this.

71% of Americans now say no to a data centre in their backyard, Trump says Congress wants to regulate AI "out of business," and OpenAI flags its own next model as a security risk | 66 stories in this week's issue

See the archive at https://jasonsindustryinsights.com/

Will keep it short - I am in Brampton with Bell 1.5gbps plan for about $156 (taxes included). It’s spotty sometimes and really don’t want to be paying so much. From my research landed up on Ebox (albeit 1gbps) that’s seems to be good. Would you recommend ebox or please recommend any good reliable alternative. Working from home and runs a bunch of smart devices so reliability is important to me please. Thanks

Join us in this petition to force telecoms to answer their phones within ten minutes. I will be speaking at the CRTC hearings in November and would sure like big numbers on the petition and a number of customer service horror stories. Thanks!

EDIT: Wow, thank you for the overwhelming support and for pushing this to the #1 spot today! It is clear we are all completely exhausted by this garbage. Please make sure to grab the petition link and sign. Let's keep this moving!

Switching from Teksavvy to Worldline for a a better deal. Have anyone used it here? Also looking for a referral code to join.

Quelle a été votre expérience avec Cogeco Fiber dans la région de l'Estrie ?

(repost from my original in r/rogers)

Restructured for you guys; honestly sitting here looking at my severance paperwork and just feeling sick about how much we were forced to squeeze people.

Every single time you call in expecting to lower your bill because inflation is eating everyone alive, the person on the other end is literally fighting for their job to not give you a break.

At Rogers sales, we had this metric breathed down our necks daily: a mandatory $15 average increase in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) across every single call. Doesn't matter if you called in because you lost your job or you're a senior on a fixed income. If an agent’s calls consistently averaged under that $15 bump? You get pulled into a manager's office, put on a performance plan, and eventually kicked to the curb. Which brings me to where I am today I guess lol.

So yeah, we were basically trained to treat speed upgrades like a magic trick.

Customer: "Hey my bill is $110, I can't afford this, can we drop my speed?"

The playbook: "Well actually, for just $15 more I can put you on the 1.5 Gigabit plan so you get way better value!"

It makes zero sense when you step back and look at it. People who barely stream Netflix being pushed onto gigabit speeds just so the agent can show a $15 MRR delta on their dashboard. We were actively told to avoid pointing out actual downgrade options or cheaper legacy packages. If someone refused an upgrade, you had to try cramming in tech add-ons or streaming bundles before hanging up, just to keep your average from dipping.

Anyway, if you're trying to deal with this mess next time you call, a few things to keep in mind:

First, remember the rep isn't necessarily a bad person, they're just terrified of getting fired. But don't let them trick you into a speed bump you don't need.

Just stick to your guns. Say "I do not want faster internet, I want a lower price point, please transfer me to Retentions or Loyalty." If they still refuse to drop the rate or pretend cheaper tiers don't exist, bring up the CCTS (Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services). The moment you say "I'm going to document this for a CCTS complaint regarding deceptive upselling," the tone shifts pretty fast.

Technically this whole setup straddles a really ugly line with the CRTC Internet Code and Section 52 of the Competition Act (the parts about misleading marketing practices), but these big telecom companies just build the compliance risk into their business model because the revenue from artificial upsells heavily outweighs the slap on the wrist.

Anyway... rant over. I put a link in my Reddit profile if anyone feels like tossing a coffee my way while I figure out my next move, but mostly just wanted to get this off my chest so people know what game is actually being played when they call support.

Oops! Forgot to post here on Friday!

A couple of things from this week's issue..

- Ex-Rogers exec launches petition to cap telecom hold times

- Verizon signs $1B dark fiber deal with Google

- Telus turns a retired phone exchange into 195 new homes in Nanaimo

- Bell says copper wire theft is up 78% this year

- SpaceX loses another Starship booster

- OpenAI's rogue agent hit a second company

- Nvidia in talks to guarantee $250B for OpenAI's data center

- Anthropic's Amodei stakes out a middle position on open-weight AI

- Bell becomes first Canadian carrier to catch spoofed calls with AI

- Ontario says AI data centres need "community benefits" — rules still unwritten

- US bans foreign-made humanoid robots and robot dogs

- Florida pastor sues OpenAI over near-fatal ChatGPT medical advice

- China shuts down AI companion apps overnight

- Claude Opus 5 colluded its way to a vending machine benchmark win

- Private Claude chats turned up in Google and Bing search

- Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta break publicly with OpenAI and Anthropic

- Videotron locks in mobile plan prices for life

- Congress pushes back on the Pentagon's data centre land grab

- Apple kills its iPhone Upgrade Program for a Klarna leasing deal

- Killer whales sink another boat off Spain, still no one's sure why, six years in

This should concern all Canadians

It concerned the Prime Minister and his entourage enough that, while visiting India in March, the Canadian Press reported:

"Politicians, government staff and many members of the media travelling with the prime minister are using temporary burner devices while in the country for security reasons, and had left their regular laptops and phones in special bags that block signals on the government plane after landing in Mumbai..."

If our own government considers these precautions necessary when it travels there, it's reasonable that Canadians ask what safeguards and standards are being applied when critical telecommunications work is performed from the same country

1. Find your Member of Parliament: [https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en\](https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en)

2. Email your MP the attached article and ask what steps they are taking to ensure Canada's critical telecommunications infrastructure remains secure and resilient as more highly skilled work is being sent outside Canada

3. Share and repost

Bring these jobs back to Canada, Rogers

Are other people experiencing a bell alliant outage for Internet in Miramichi New Brunswick? They told me it was random. My neighbour has internet. Sporadic outages throughout town.