I, like a few others on this forum have been looking to acquire a grandfathered UL data plan. I was on the phone this past Saturday with a Fido CSR who actually knew of the rare $50 UL data plan and he told me that Fido was going to limit the old UL plans to the Edge network only. I was stunned and asked him, how could they do this???? His answer was that the plan was still being billed as unlimited GPRS.
My question is has anyone else heard this? Is this even technologically possible? Can Fido limit people to the Edge network only under their current agreements?
At the very least, they could throttle speeds, per account, to edge type speeds. Wind throttles when you go over 5GB and AT&T throttles in the US. Could they actually limit accounts to GPRS? No sure. But, if you are seeing edge speeds, would it matter how they are doing it?
Carrier unlocked iPhone 4
Unlimited airtime, Unlimited CAN/US long distance, Unlimited SMS to CAN/US wireless numbers
2500 Call Forwarding minutes to CAN/US numbers
CiD, 6GB
Google Voice for visual voice mail with message transcription, conditional greetings, unlimited messages (vs 35 message cap), remote retrieval from any PC or phone, no auto-purge after 10 days and most importantly no $7-$8 charge.
I don't think that they have any more reason to make such a change now, any more than in the last six or so years since the data option and plan were deprecated, or the three-ish years since 3G was introduced. If the few users who are paying this premium price for data that actually has a whopping markup are somehow managing to make the carrier lose money, changes would have happened shortly after these changes long ago.
For a while, Fido stopped allowing TOR (Transfer Of Responsibility) for unlimited data. Then they relented and started allowing TOR again. They would not have bothered to relent if it were not useful to hold onto some highly profitable accounts.
I was always surprised they allowed 3G on that plan, since it was not even sold for EDGE speeds. But I highly doubt 4G LTE will ever make it for the plan, since Rogers is requiring new sims, plans, and separate APN's for the true 4G already.
I was always surprised they allowed 3G on that plan, since it was not even sold for EDGE speeds. But I highly doubt 4G LTE will ever make it for the plan, since Rogers is requiring new sims, plans, and separate APN's for the true 4G already.
It probably has less effect on the 3G network than on the 2G one. 2G bandwidth is allocated using TDMA and a constant connection can soak up quite a lot of the local tower's resources. There is a hard limit on how many subscribers can be supported at once per tower. With 3G... well, they can carry a lot more subscribers, for data, with a continuous degradation of throughput per subscriber.
Well, it should work this way with a well-managed network. Roger's long history of 3G stalling (quietly having no throughput without managing handsets down to 2G) at times of only moderate load says that they don't handle this bandwidth sharing as well as they should. For this purpose, there is little difference between having some unlimited data subscribers on 3G and having just as many users with suitably generous plans (1GB, 6GB or more) jamming things up at some popular time on a tower.
I called Fido again twice today and the two different CSR didn't even know of the plan. This doesn't surprise me as they are so old. But I do wonder how many of these plans still do exist.
As for value, I have spoken to a few people and some have sold as recently as 2 months ago and some 2 years ago. The range has been 700-1000$. Many people seem to think $1,000 is the going rate for them now. Although I was contacted by one fellow trying to pay off his student loans and asking $15,000 (somehow I don't think that's gonna sell). The question is how much people use them? I would suggest that the majority of people don't go anywhere near the 6GB as is offered in some plans. Thoughts?
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Originally Posted by Bad Liar
and way too many phones...
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