Obviously most of you are complete idiots. And so was the dude who downloaded his way to a brand new BMW. Do the words "MOBILE BROWSER" mean anything to you? do they also include PC/Desktop or Laptop? nope they don't. And if the guy had read his freekin' contract he would have known that he shouldn't download crap onto his computer. People complain that cell phone companies rip you off. You know what? The only reason people get ripped of is cause they allow themselves to by not reading the contract. Not doing research finding the best plan. Its your fault as the consumer for being ignorant no?

The website doesn't say anything about the plan add-on not including downloading stuff to your computer or using your phone for internet access. It does make it look like the add-on is probably just for running your in-phone web browser, but since that's the only data add-on, it would be natural to assume it could be used for home internet as well.

http://www.bell.ca/shopping/en_CA_ON/MBUN.details

ToOLoNgLyF: Bills don't arrive as soon as the month is over. By the time he got his bill part way through December and realized what was going on, he had already accumulated additional $$$$$$$ fees.

I too live in Ottawa... I'm with Rogers but dont dare use Internet on my phone... they offer 5MB of data for $5..... who wants to pay a grand to be able to download 1gb from their phone??? This is AFTER Rogers cut their data prices in half..

The reason why his bill continued to grow was that his bill was mailed out to him for Nov. It generally takes Bell about a week to get their bills out to people so there is no way he could have known.

I live in Ottawa and I am very curious how this is going to pan out. We have credit card companies and banks that look out for 'suspicious' usage and they flag the account. You would think that a cellular phone company might want to start doing the same, its only 1 line of code:

if (currentPrice > $x) { ask why! }

where x is the maximum a person wants their phone bill to possibly be. I think $500 is more then enough!

Didn't theinquirer have an article about 3 weeks back talking about the cost of someone using their cell phone for internet access and the possibility of it costing $50k in North America (Canada).

There are several evil things that happened in this story.

1) He had an 'unlimited' surfing plan, but for some obscure reason (ie. none) it only applies if he views the www on his little cell phone, but doesn't apply if he clicks on the same links from his desktop/laptop.

2) The companies charge $0.05 per kilo (not mega) KILO byte. And they are somehow able to do this with a straight face. Clicking on CNN.com once can cost $38. If you are familiar with numbers, and words like kilo versus mega, you'll understand that they're completely insane.

3) At some point people start sqwaking about how much cheaper the plans are. Some of these telcos offer "1MB" plans (again, inexplicably with a straight face) where you'd be able to click on CNN.com once and have enough left over to perhaps check one e-mail. Per month. Once you exceed this bandwidth, then the plan offer the huge discounted rate of $0.03 per kilo (not mega) KILO byte.

The only solution is for thousands of people to do exactly the same thing and run up quadrillions of dollars in bills. Then the telco won't get paid, but will probably be able to claim some sort of tax credit for "losses".

Because I was awake in Grade 3, I signed up for an actually unlimited plan through a different carrier. Since my house is in the forest I cannot get high speed Internet via any of the normal wired methods. So when the EV-DO 'mobile' option became available with an actually unlimited plan, I jumped on it. For my house. With a CTR-350 'travel' WiFi router.

In the first week I downloaded almost 3GB (catching up on Top Gear). This would have cost $152,000 if I wasn't signed up to the precisely correct plan. If I'd signed up to the most common plans it would have been much cheaper at $92,000. For Week 1 only.

As it was, the line item showed a usage cost of $0.00 plus the monthly fee of $75 plus another $8 pls tax. Period.

The Canadian telcos are sometimes completely insane. $50 per megabyte. Puhleeze...


"Bouchard said Bell cannot monitor the activities of every one of its customers."

So cell phone providers don't know usage details? Cell phone providers don't know capacities on their network? What a terrible statement to make public. It is one thing to sell an item to someone and never see them again, but with cell phone service you have contact with that customer every time they type a character in a text message or say "Hello" over the cell towers.

If they didn't know their cell phone customers' actions, how did they know he was tethering? How did they know how much bandwidth he was using?

Also, the title "Unlimited data plan" really needs to be modified. This isn't the first case like this and it won't be the last. Don't advertise unlimited byte transfers then limit how you can use those bytes (no tethering, no streaming radio, etc).

After speaking to Bell about November charges of $65,000, Staniaszek said he was informed his bill had increased to nearly $85,000 after more downloading in December.

Its not like they didnt warn him. they should have make him pay december + stupidity fees