Telus vs Rogers

October 17th, 2005, 04:40 PM

I live in Victoria BC, and was wondering which service would be better for me. Coverage and costs. Your opinion is much appreciated.

October 17th, 2005, 08:51 PM

prices are very similar,

Benefits with telus: never personally used telus or rogers in BC so couldnt tell you but Telus is king in those parts for telecommunications so I'd stick with them for coverage.

excellent customer service with proven track record. You get PERKS which is coupons and gift certificates just for being a telus subscriber, free voicemail with most of their plans.

Benefits with going with Rogers: Global service(if you purchase a specific type of phone you can travel around the world with it), SIM cards for easy removability between phones, better phone selection hands down.

it mite be easier to tailor a solution for you fi you explain, your phone preferences, plan requirements etc.

October 18th, 2005, 12:50 AM

phone preferences...well i guess i'd go with something which has a bunch of features. the motorola V635 interrested me, the step down from that the V551 if i'm not mistaken also interrested me. and for a plan what i wanted was unlimited evenings and weekends starting at 6pm with 100+anytime minutes. And additionally i would like voicemail and call display. thnx for ur input in advance

October 18th, 2005, 02:08 AM

Not trying to defend Rogers but ...

-Didn't you say Rogers cover better in your area?
-Rogers has better policies (changing plans, cancelation fees)
-Better technology

hm..

that's it for now.

kalok~

October 18th, 2005, 07:36 AM

Last I heard, Rogers International coverage really isn't that good, so I wouldn't necessarily use that as a factor.

Fido has the most roaming agreements and therefore the best International coverage. I still wouldn't use either though, to roam internationally. It's VERY expensive to use your fido or rogers phone anywhere other than Canada or the US.

In Europe, you're better off getting a prepaid simcard for 20€ than using your phone.

On the note of Rogers vs. Telus... if you normally take customer service into consideration, I'd say Telus just must have better service than Rogers (and especially Fido). Not that I've used Telus before myself, but I have horror stories with Rogers.

October 18th, 2005, 11:35 AM

I'd be staying within BC for the duration of my plan...due to school. And customer service is not a huge factor but it does contribute some.

October 19th, 2005, 04:14 PM

rogers now owns fido and their roaming agreements. Personally i woulndt use rogers international roaming ever again, way too expensive. Only good for businessmen.



The V635 is a very nice phone, a bit bulky but because it has a ton of features. The telus equivalent is the motorola V710, which has practically the same specs except the V710 has a big screen and its bluetoooth is only for car kits and headsets.
In terms of plans that might suit your needs telus and rogers are offering the same plan but different promotions:

Megatime 25 or Talk to Me 25:
100 daytime minutes
1000 evenings and weekends
unlimited incoming calls
100 LD minutes to canada or US(telus still offering it i dont noe about rogers)

since you want evenings and weekends from 6 either plan would cost you $30.00 for the same plan.

Differences: I believe rogers is offering free rogers-to-rogers calling for studnets who activate a phone with valid student card. Telus plans already include voicemail so your saving money there. WIth rogers you will be paying:

25+5(evenings/weekends extension)+ 9(caller Id, Voicemail bundle)+ 6.95(system access fee)+.50(911 fee)=46.95+ taxes

telus:
25+5(evenings/weekends extension)+ 7(caller Id, Voicemail bundle)+ 6.95(system access fee)+.50(911 fee)=44.95

If you dont need the 100 LD minutes or free incoming calls you can go with the telus to telus 20 plan:

100 daytime minutes, 1000 evenings/weekends minutes, unlimited calling between telus clients locally.

this plan will cost you:

20+5(evenings and weekends extension)+7(caller id/voicemail 10 extended voicemail)+ 6.95(system access fee)+.5(911 fee)=39.45+ taxes

mind you telus has a promotion for free bundle for 2 months and free extended evenings/weekends for 3 months so your saving an additional $29.00. Which ever one you go with you will get great coverage. Personally I prefer telus mobility, but I currently have rogers service and its not too bad. havent recontracted though because telus mite have a conversion offer again like last year.


i dont think the technology really matters in this case and even that is open to opinion

October 19th, 2005, 04:15 PM

theres somethign else you cna do:

you could activate a telus Mike service on the phone to phone 20 rate plan. Its the same as the telus to telus 20 rate plan but you get free caller id and vociemail 10 for duration of your contract. you aslo get a cool walkie-talkie phone.

October 19th, 2005, 08:04 PM

Rogers no-longer offer 100 Canadian LD minutes on their unlimited incoming, but instead, they make early evening available to that plan, in way, i think it's better.

$30
100 minutes daytime + 1000 minutes nights(6pm to 7am) and weekends.
unlimited incoming.

kalok~

October 23rd, 2005, 04:44 PM

i do not believe that rogers offers unlimited incoming calls with that particular plan i could be wrong...but if u could provide the link it would be great

October 25th, 2005, 12:15 AM

it's not advertise online. It's a "in-store" special. the only thing that i can tell to proove you is.. "I WORK FOR ROGERS"

if that isn't enough then, don't beleive me.

kalok~

October 25th, 2005, 01:22 AM

Rogers is GSM network, Telus is not. We have both in our family, and can not really say which one is better. Since you are only staying here in Victoria for a time, just go for the one with the cheapest plan that works for you.

Justin

October 25th, 2005, 05:58 PM

mk thnx for the opinions its much appreciated...i'm thinking i'll go with my original decision of rogers...since i'll be travelling upisland during the summer alot. And rogers has better coverage up there. Makes more sense to go with them for the extra 5$

October 25th, 2005, 07:38 PM

Sorry about the following rant. but it is a summary of my experiences with Rogers and Telus over the years.

About Rogers, if your cell phone is happening to be sitting near some powered speakers, be prepared to hear some funky interference noises when your phone communicates with the cell site. Be it your computer speakers, home theatre speakers, whatever. It is annoying. With telus phones, you don't get that.

With Telus, I got poor coverage where I live. I cannot make a phone call from my house using my Telus cell phone in digital mode. The phone always fell back to analog and it takes about a minute before I hear ringing. Could be the phone. It is a Motorola V8160.

With Rogers, I can make phone calls from my house no problem. But sometimes, when I'm on my way home and somebody phones me, the signal is lost partway through the conversation. Could be the phone, it is a Motorola V551.

Originally, I signed up with Rogers about 10 years ago and switched to Telus after hearing the quality of the voice calls on their cell phones in comparison to Rogers. It was crystal clear to say the least. Then something happened... the voice quality one day started to suck. After some searching, I learned that they sacrificed voice quality for call capacity (ie. they reduced the voice quality so that they could service more customers in a given bandwidth). That pissed me off. If you want to hear the difference, just call up customer service... they always give you the best possible quality when you phone them.

Telus wants money everytime you change your plan and they will *reluctantly* do plan matching. The CSR said that they do not plan match but I knew better since my friend just did it. In the end, I had to talk to a manager over the phone to get them to match a Rogers plan and they charged me $25 to do it... plus they renewed my contract for another 3 years. With Rogers, it's no problem the last time I did it... when I was originally with them).

Rogers billing is confusing. They have a weird way of coming up with the totals. I am on a $25 family plan and I added on call display. Nowhere on the bill do I see $25. Instead, I see different numbers get added on, then taken off, etc. I guess if I tried hard enough I would be able to figure it out, but since the totals match, I'm not worried.

When I re-signed with Rogers, my first bill came out to about $300 with all the fees and cost of the phones, etc. But they screwed up because they said that the first couple of months I get free messaging, voice mail, caller id, local calling, etc... So here I am messaging to my hearts content and when I get the bill, it turns out that they charged me for all of those *free* featuers. Good thing is that the CSR was happy to correct the problem, bad thing is that they didn't understand the bill either when I told them what my plan was.

Telus PERKS are good. I've used them to get hats, T-Shirts, hotel rooms in Vegas, etc. If you stay with them for 5 years, they will even send you a gift (in my case, it was a hands free set worth at least $30).

The last thing is that your Rogers phone works via a SIM card. Theoretically, you should be able to take your phone to another country with a GSM network (ie. United States, China), plug a SIM card local to that country and be able to make local calls (as opposed to long distance roaming). However, since Rogers locks all their phones (ie.the phone only uses their SIM cards), you will not be able to do this. Good thing is that you can unlock the phone at an independent phone retailer but it will cost you money and probably void the warranty on the phone. I asked a sales rep at a local Rogers store and they said they could do it, but they wanted my first born in order for it to happen.

Anyways, that's all I can think of. I hope this information is useful for you. If not, I hope it was at least entertaining

October 29th, 2005, 02:11 PM

sweet thanks...I've pretty much already decided on rogers...but thnx for the input anyways

October 29th, 2005, 02:40 PM

the thing that worries me is how little daytime minutes they offer...cause right now the evenings and weekends with 100 daytime minutes is perfect cause i still have school and such but during the summer it might be cut a little thin

October 30th, 2005, 01:42 AM

With Rogers, you can switch your plan whenever and however you want. There is no penalities nor fees.

kalok~

October 30th, 2005, 07:55 AM

only thing is that if your on a promotionary plan and it goes off promotion you will not be able to switch back to it. Keep that in mind.