Why connect Telus Motorola Milestone to Rogers

[darrenm]

I see so many threads where people are taking a Telus Motorola Milestone and trying to tweak it to run on Rogers network (at slower speeds than it would on Telus).

Why are they just not going to Telus? Is there some other advantage to making the Motorola Milestone work with Rogers network?

It just seems many people dislike Rogers - is there something about Telus and the Milestone I should know about? Maybe locked into a contract at Rogers... but it's not like the Moto hardware is cheap without contract through Telus (something like $599 CAN).

[alexkidd2000]

I did it because I wanted a high res android phone with qwerty. Options are very limited. I can buy the phone outright through telus then buy an iphone from rogers and ebay it. Break even in the end. There is no way I would get my plan on telus.

[oddsocks]

At slower speeds? You might want to check again.

And the reason might be one of many. Perhaps they have a better plan that Telus will not match or even come close to. Perhaps they prefer having a GSM backdrop for when they lose UMTS/HSPA. Perhaps because Rogers has treated them properly for the past X amount of years they've been with them and not kicked them off grandfathered plans that technically weren't grandfathered. Perhaps Rogers has better data rates than Telus for some? Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

Lots of answers. Silly and subjective question.

[cloneman]

Fun Facts:

- Rogers has a GSM/EDGE network that is far greater than Telus's "new" 3G-only network, so you've got better coverage

- Rogers' has full HSPA+ Speeds in big cities, and is just as a fast as the Telus network. (although since the telus network is new, there are fewer subscribers on it)

- Since Telus only has a 3G network, if you want to put your sim card in another phone, it wont work unless it's a 3G phone that is also unlocked. Most people have older rogers-GSM phones that they uses as backup phones.

- Telus is an aggravating company to deal with overall. They make very few attempts to innovate and tend to make strange feature and price choices. Their strategy is well reflected in their commercials: a smoke screen of pretty animals.

Rogers is the best of 3 evils in Canada, in terms of cellular service. There are great retention plans to be had, and the telephone representatives tend to try being helpful and useful. There's some bad eggs in every company, but I can recall at least 40% of my conversations with Rogers being EXTREMELY pleasant, and less than 10% being disatisfactory. A genuine attempt is made to answer your question in a human, not a scripted manner.

In the last 6 months, Rogers offered me a very advantageous retention plan which includes lots of minutes and data for 60$ all inclusive.

They also repaired my Nokia e71, which in their system was showing as warranty expired, just based on my word that the warranty was valid and that I had documentation to prove it. They didn't ask me to fax it at all. This was an advance replacement.

For their part, Telus refused to send me my free carmount for my milestone that I spent 700$ on, just because I didn't sign up with them.

2 years ago,
They drove me to transfer my Mike plan to someone else after they were unable to change the number of rings to voicemail, or tell me how many minutes I had used in the month. These are drawbacks still present for iden customers in the east as far as I know.

And finally, with my new Milestone, i had to root it just to get A-GPS working correctly, because TELUS put the a-gps server behind a firewall, so it doesn't work properly over wifi, or on non-TELUS networks.

For their part, Rogers provided me with support on a 8-year old handset so that I could get it working with the internet. This while being a pay-as-you-go customer.

[evilbaby]

When the phone first came out it was 529 at BB and that's what I got it for . After I sold my Magic and Dream is only cost me $50 for the phone. If I had wanted to buy out of my Rogers contract it would have cost me $400, plus I'd have to sign a new contract with Telus and pay more. Not to mention I have a decent retention plan with Rogers that includes the 6 gig data plan. When Telus wants to give me 6gigs of Data, 100 LD minutes, unlm text, voice mail, call display 5pm eve/weekends and 300minutes for $62 a month after taxes I'll consider switching. Until then I'll stick with Rogers. Not to mention with Rogers I have mroe negotiating power to try and get an even better plan(which shouldn't be all that hard)

[n1ghtgnom3]

You had to root your milestone to get gos to work? Thats weird. Im with rogers nd use edge but downloaded copilot

[Evil Baby]

You had to root your milestone to get gos to work? Thats weird. Im with rogers nd use edge but downloaded copilot

GPS on the Telus Milestone will work with Rogers, it just takes a long time to lock onto satellites because it tries to connect to Telus servers first.

[n1ghtgnom3]

GPS on the Telus Milestone will work with Rogers, it just takes a long time to lock onto satellites because it tries to connect to Telus servers first.

Is it the same with the Euro milestone? cause it takes about 1-3 mins to find my location, and then it works fine no problem after that.