My Cellphone My Terms

Rogers to End System Access Fees! Not exactly.

Does SAF fees end by Rogers mean lower cell phone bills?

System access fees (SAF) need to die a natural death. As we all know this is NOT a government fee it’s a pure money grab by the carriers.  Bell, Rogers and TELUS have removed this fee from their flanker or discount brands – Fido, Solo and Koodo. So in an attempt to alleviate some of customer’s pure ire on this fee, Rogers is eliminating it. Good news right! Hold strain, not so fast, in its place they are introducing a new “regulatory recovery fee” which will differ by province and will be added to customers cell phone bills. It is said to be in the range of $2.46 to $3.46.

Well that doesn’t seem too bad, since the system access fee is $6.95 this is a smaller fee so customers should be happier. Wrong again – Rogers is planning on increasing the plan prices by $5 to compensate for the lost revenue. So customer’s cell phone bills are likely to remain the same or slightly higher in some cases. The hope is since customers will have a better understanding of what’s in their bill, they will be more likely to accept these fees as the gas stations have done with breaking down what’s included in gas prices. Well I for sure don’t feel better, and replacing one fee with another doesn’t help either.

But I can understand why they would do this. With over 7 million subscribers (8 million+ subscribers if you include Fido but no SAF fees with Fido) each paying $7 that’s 50 million dollars a month and over $500 million dollars a year in revenues. Not too sure they will eliminate these fees anytime soon.

But why the move in the first place, well with Wind Mobile (Globalive) set to launch early next year, this is an attempt to remove the SAF stigma from the Rogers brand and provide more clarity to why they need these fees.

Nice try but I’m certainly not buying it.

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