When Fido started in Montreal, I remember them making a lot of noise about
having chosen GSM so that they could be the first with all the new features
because GSM was much more developped than other protocols. Well, Fido may have
been first to have features implemented, but it has been the last to admit to
having them.

Also, Microcell was to have a division designed to help fund development of
GSM applications to give its network an edge.

CSD DATA is the worse mistake: Fido CSRs were instructed to lie to customers
and tell them Fido didn't have it, even though it had it from the start. One
needed to mention that magic keyword  "Nokia 9000", after which the CSRs were
allowed to admit to having DATA. (heck, initially, Microcell even acted as an
ISP for those phones, which was an advantage since its backpbone was connected directly).

And when my cousin told me last fall that her son chose a AT&T (now Rogers)
phone because Fido didn't have camera phones, I saw that the trend was
continuing. Fido has those phones, but people don't really know about it.

Fido was years ahead of the others. It could have made quite an impression,
especially since TDMA and CDMA were still a long way from fully functional SMS
and CSD Data. And had Rogers not annouced it was getting GPRS ASAP, I suspect
that Fido would have kept GPRS under wraps for quite some time. (And I suspect
that MMS has been available on Microcell for some time too, but Fido is
probably waiting to see how others price theirs before they admit to having
the service).

FIDO had great SMS services offred by 3rd parties, but when Fido finally
decided to do something with its SMS, it killed the pricing scheme that would
have made SMS really work, and it also killed the information providers to
give its own Microcell I5 (Ifido) a chance. It flopped and now there is
nothing left now.

Martin Renter's gateway provided better email gateway service that what Fido
offered (and what Fido still offers), and that was despite Microcell putting
sticks into Mr Renter's wheels instead of helping him and making him part of
"the team" because he was a great asset to Microcell that costed next to nothing.

And when they got their first SMS applications for banking, it turned out to
be more expensive to do it with SMS than to use up air time to dial the bank's
800 numbers to perform the same transaction over conventional telephone banking.

There is quite a long list of "assets" which Microsel sqandered. And Fido's
actions went against their original intentions of fostering 3rd party
providers.

WAP seems destined the same way, with Fido refusing to provide support to 3rd
party developpers. It seems to want WAP to be used as a conduit to sell
ringtones and games, instead of allowing 3rd party to develop contents which
will end up generating a lot of traffic.

Remember that when Fido started it failed IFido SMS service, it blocked
"binary" SMS messages coming from outside its network to prevent customers
from getting ringtones from other providers, in order to give its IFIDO a monopoly.

Microcell shoudln't be a content provider, it should be a content transporter.
It should foster 3rd partty content providers and push users to make the most
use of it.

By having the same mentality as it did with SMS, wanting to be the sole
provider of information, it will not help that product take off like it could.

The problem is that with banks on their tail, FIDO doesn't have much freedom
to use the "if you build it they will come" philosophy. They can't tell the
banks that they need to wait a few years before seing real revenus come out of
wap/gprs. The problem is that by stifling usage at the start, it will never
gain the popularity that it could achieve.

Now, if Rogers supports developpers, the later will develop based on the
documentation provided by Rogers. Since Fido refuses to provide documentation
on how its gateway is implemented, developpers will be forced to ignore Fido
and their contenst may not work on all Fido phones because the gateway will
refuse it. Or developpers may develop identification schemes that rely on the
network providing a subscriber identification string in HTTP headers, and
since Fido doesn't provide this (or omits this), then such sites won't work on
the fido site.

So Fido customers will be stuck with the limited selection of sites that have
probably paid Microcell to appear on their WAP home page, while Rogers will
have a much greater inventory of WAp sites that work well on its network and
generate much traffic.

So far, Fido had waited for all the others to offer a feature before admitting
it also had that feature. It was easy since  TDMA/CDMA networks were late in
getting the technoloogy. But now that Rogers is also on GSM, Microcell has
lost its edge and will no longer start a year or two ahead of its competitors.
This could mean that without 1-2 years of testing/debugging that Microcell had
the luxury of having before, now, they'll be scrambling to keep up with
Rogers. Will they be able to maintain the generally superior quality that
Microcell had over Rogers ? Or will the much shorter timeframes require a
sacrifice of quality before the product is rolled out to the public ?

MMS will be the next thing to check for.

***IF*** Rogers and/or Bell/Telus decide to go 3G, it will be the end of Fido
as a "leader" and their only way to survive will be to offer the older
services at much reduced prices. Fido just doesn't have the financial strength
to widthstand a migration to 3G.

Thankfully, 3G isn't coming to Canada for at least a couple of years, unless
Ricky Branson uses pocket change to setup a 3G system in Canada.

Yes, the name "Fido" is well known. But I think that they are now riding on
their initial ad blitzes from 5-7 years ago that were extremely succesful in
establishing the brand. Their ads now loack the imagination, impact that their
initial ones had. Remember the airship ?

however, Basy Street Analysts keep on picking on the fact that Fido has a
higher churn rtate. Before 2001 when they screwed up web/sms/mail, (or was it
2002 ?), Fido prided itself on having the lowest churn rate. And as Fido's
advantages eroded, the churn rate went up.

Also, the whole concept of "customer retention department" is flawed. They
should abandon that department immediatly. The regular 4 legged furry CSRs
shoudld be the "customer satisfaction department" to make sure that no
customer gets unhappy enough to need to be shunted to a "retention department".

Back when Fido started, except for the lying about DATA, the 4 legged furry
CSRs were excellent. Then, after Fido started to grow, I think that they
outsourced the customer support and it went downhill from there. the CSRs
weren't trained as well.

Right now, if the normal CSRs are not allowed to deal with a case, the
customer will just shop around and his decision has already been made to
leave. When he calls to cancel, there is not much that can be done to retain
him (especially if he has already signed a contract with another carrier).

I think you'll find that people in BC would probably state that Telus was BC
Tel not that many years ago. BC Tel was bigger than AGT. And I think that most
of Telus' operations and employees are former BC Tel. (even though the head
office is legally in Alberta).

But Bell is a very new name to people outside of Ontario/Québec. And you'll
find that Bell subsidiaries in other provinces, while sharing the "Mobility"
trademark, will affix their own name to it. So it isn't quite the "one"
national network yet.

The problem is that when you are the smaller guy, with a smaller network, you
need to stand out with better features, better service and lower prices and
better business practices. All thinsg being equal, a customer will not choose
Fido over Rogers since Rogers has much better network footprint.

Contracts are anothert nail in the coffin for Fido because it removes one of
the major differentiators that gave Fido a distinct advantage.

In the end, if the Banks force Fido to emulate its competitors, why will
people choose Fido ?

When Fido started, it was the underdog (no pun intended). It was the bright
new kid on the block with revolutionary pricing, advertising and business
practices. And no matter what happens next, one has to give a big  milk bone
to the dog for having done that.

But now, instead of continuing the revolution, they are trying to imitate the
bad guys. And you don't see a smaller guy in a large crowd.

We used to think that per-second and no-contracts were sacred since Fido used
them for advertising. Now, per-second is gone for prepaid,  no-contracts is
gone too. In their goal to emulate the bad guys, will Fido kill per-second
billing for all packages too ? Will they do it like when they changed to
send-to-end and not tell anyone ?

   About the Fido "brand": it might be strong in the public's eye, but try
asking the public of their opinion of that brand. Most people don't speak
kindly of "Fido", at least the ones I've met. TTYL