Starting in August, cellphone users at Bell Mobility and Telus Mobility will be charged new fees to receive text messages, something they can currently do for free.
The new charge is for pay-per-use customers who don't subscribe to any monthly text bundles. It already cost pay-per-use customers from both companies 15 cents to send a text message, but until now the recipient did not pay to receive them.
“The growth in text messages has been nothing short of phenomenal,” wrote Telus spokeswoman Anne-Julie Gratton in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail, referring to the latest statistics from the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association that pegs the number of text messages sent in Canada at more than 45.3 million per day.
“This volume places tremendous demands on our network and we can't afford to provide this service for free any more,” Ms. Gratton wrote.
Bell Mobility will begin charging 15 cents for each received text message starting Aug. 8. Telus will charge the same price starting Aug. 24.
“Remember that almost all major North American wireless carriers, including in Canada, have taken this pricing approach,” wrote Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo in an e-mail to The Globe. “In fact, most carriers in the U.S. now charge 20 cents.”
He said Bell informed subscribers of the new charge in June and recommended that customers who send and receive more than a few text messages should sign up for an unlimited text bundle.
“We are simply aligning ourselves with market realities,” Mr. Laszlo wrote.
Mr. Laszlo said that if a Bell customer receives any spam messages, he or she can contact customer care to have their account credited.
“If a client is experiencing an ongoing issue with spam, the client has the option of changing their phone number,” Mr. Laszlo wrote. “The $25 fee will be waived if a previous client was registered to the phone number and may have solicited spam service.”
Ms. Gratton from Telus said if customers receive a message that they shouldn't receive, they can call Telus to remove the charge from their bill.
The number of text messages sent in Canada has skyrocketed since it was first introduced in April 2002. In that month, there were 369,000 text messages sent, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.
But the latest figures available – March 2008 – showed that there were 1.4 billion text messages sent per month in Canada, an average of about 45.3 million a day.
“It's about building your network so you actually have the capacity to offer all of those services to everybody who wants it,” association spokesman Marc Choma said.
As of now, Rogers will not charge customers for incoming text messages, spokeswoman Elizabeth Hamilton said.
“I would say it's a unique differentiator for Rogers,” she said, declining to speculate about the company's future plans.
“We're constantly updating them to serve our customers' needs and usage,” she said.
