Mobilicity Opens Its Doors

Both the CBC and the Globe and Mail are carrying stories about the launch of Canada’s newest entrant into the cellular phone service industry, Mobilicity (formerly known as DAVE wireless).

Similar to the first new entrant Wind Mobile, Mobilicity is offering no contract plans, something which consumers have wanted for some time. Mobilicity will be in for some tough competition however, as Wind has almost a 6-month jump on them.

Phones

Also similar to Wind, Mobilicity runs on the 3G-AWS spectrum, meaning that current editions of many popular phones – such as the iPhone – will not run at 3G speeds on their network. As of now, the phone lineup is fairly limited, consisting of the Totem, Sony Ericsson TM-506, Huawei U7519, Nokia 5230, HTC Snap, and the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Prices are very similar to those available at Wind, with the exception being the BlackBerry Bold 9700 – $450 at Wind, $499.99 at Mobilicity.

Plans

The nice thing is they’re simple: You get an unlimited plan, or you pay per use. It doesn’t look like there are any tiers to their plans at all, so if you want to use data, you either spring for the unlimited data plan, or you pay $5/Mb (I assume it’s actually $5/MB but I’m going with what’s on their site).

The $45/mo plan looks quite useable if you don’t require any data use. Unlimited talk/text/Canadian long distance with voicemail and caller ID for $45 isn’t bad. The per-use data rates are pretty steep however. If you use more than 4 MB of data a month (very easy to do), then you are better off just springing for the $65 all-inclusive plan. You’ll get the added bonuses of unlimited US long distance, unlimited global text, and call waiting, call forwarding, and 3-way calling.

If Google Voice starts offering Canadian numbers, then the $35 plan looks very attractive as one could rely on the Google Voice provided voicemail and long-distance.

As far as unlimited plans go, it looks like Mobilicity has Wind beat. To get the same basic options with Wind one would need the $45/mo Always Shout plan (currently 50% off for 6 months), and the $35/mo unlimited data plan. That’s $80/mo with Wind, $65/mo with Mobilicity. Factoring in the current discount at Wind which brings the price to $57.50 for 6 months, Wind is cheaper for the first 9 months at those rates, and then Mobilicity starts to take over.

And this is where it gets interesting. One can easily sign up with Wind for 9 months, then switch over to Mobilicity. Sure you’d have to pay for a transfer of your phone number, but if you have Google Voice (still waiting on Canadian availability of numbers…) getting a new number doesn’t matter.

My Wallet

Mobilicity has a feature called My Wallet which is essentially a pay-as-you-go account. You add money to it as you would pay your bill, and any balance is available for pay-per-use services if you don’t go for the $65 all-inclusive plan. I like this feature. Actually, I really like this feature. If you don’t have the money in your account, you won’t be able to use those expensive pay-per-use services. How many times have you checked your phone bill only to find it is $100 more than you thought because of some data charge or long distance charge you didn’t think you made? It looks like this My Wallet feature will prevent that, and good on Mobilicity for providing a pay-as-you-go option.