I am in Canada for 4 months and got a phone with Bell Canada as well as dial up internet access by Bell Sympatico. However, the guy only told me that I’d have to pay 25something monthly plus 23 for the internet and that it would cost 8 cents a minute to call Germany. However, he never mentioned what the local calls would cost.
I assumed that they were for free, since they had been for free at the hotel where I was staying. But now that I’ve called me brother and have already accumulated some 30 hours of local calls due to the dial up internet access, he told me that probably it isn’t for free.
So I tried calling 310-BELL, but some sort of female robot played a prank on me there and I didn’t get the information I was looking for there. Their homepage isn’t very informative either, so can anybody alleviate my conscience? My question is this:
Are local calls - dialup internet in particular - by Bell Canada for free or is there a cost involved? If there is a cost, at how many cents per minute would I be looking here?
Phew, that’s a relief!
Well, local calls in Germany have never been free. At least not in my lifetime. In fact, they used to be awfully expensive and nowadays local calls with the Telekom are even more expensive than calling overseas with a call-by-call number.
Hence I really got a shock when my brother brought up the question on how much I’d have to pay per minute, because I had just assumed it was for free due to the hotel experience. Thanks again for the confirmation!
Purely a guess, but I wonder if the confusion is that your internet access may have a per-minute charge if you go over your monthly limit? i.e. The local calls to the ISP are free but not the use of the ISP.
No. I wasn’t worried about the charges by sympatico, because they actually explained the options on their homepage. I went with the “unlimited” version, which means 3 months for free and unlimited hours for 23 Can$ for the 4th month that I will be here.
What I was worried about, really were local call charges as I would have to pay for those back home; but I am glad to hear that they don’t exist over here.
Look into getting DSL from sympatico , depending on how long you plan on staying , your only paying another 4 bucks or so for highspeed. If you keep it long enough it goes up to about 48 bucks or so , but if your not gonna be in the country for that long , what the heck.
And worse , the droid starts asking if you want french or english service , then proceeds to tell you ,that due to overwhelming demand( can’t be bothered to hire more people in the call center, your call is very important to us.
All local calls with in the calling area are free, the only difference that I can remember , since I am in the 705 area code , from Toronto , is that some where from oshawa to cambridge are in the 905 area code , from east to west ,and probably up to new market in the north.
Some 905 calls are free , and others are long distance depending on where you live. With the interenet ,as long as you have sympaticos own service ,and you are using the correct dial up number ,then there is no cost beyond the flat rate unlimited plan.
The only time I have heard of anything else , is AOL listing dial up # , with out people realizing that using the Buffalo dial up # from toronto , is gonna cost. I think AOL has changed that now , but ymmv.
