Montreal-based national carrier Bell may revamp its rate plan suite along with the launch of its 'SmartPay' device financing options on July 25th.
According to internal documents obtained by MobileSyrup, Bell plans to launch two main plan options for customers: subsidized and 'SmartPay' plans.
The first category features the same subsidy tiers available to Bell customers today: BYOD, Smartphone, Premium, Premium+ and Ultra.
SmartPay, however, replaces those subsidy tiers with a financing plan. This means customers only pay the BYOD plan rate plus the monthly installment of their financing plan.
Additionally, it appears Bell will mirror its plan options across SmartPay and subsidized plans. Both categories offer unlimited, non-sharing data plans. The first is $85 per month for 10GB of high-speed data with unlimited usage. While the document doesn't specify, usage after the 10GB of high-speed data is likely capped at 512Kbps like Bell's current unlimited plans. There is also a 20GB option for $105 per month.
Both of those plan prices are for the BYOD tier and are marked 'NW' by the document, which typically stands for nation-wide regarding texting and calling capabilities. It doesn't say what texting or calling capabilities are included in the plans. The document also shows 'US' variants of the plans, which indicates Bell plans to support U.S. calling and roaming options similar to the recent additions to Rogers' Infinite plans. The 'US' variants start at $105 for 10GB and $125 for 20GB.
Further, the document includes new 'Connect Everything Share' plans at 10GB and 20GB for the same price as the unlimited plans in both nation-wide and U.S. variants. It isn't clear what these plans are, but it is possible that these versions aren't unlimited and have data overages. They probably allow customers to have multiple lines with a shared data pool, similar to Telus' recently announced 'Simple Share' plans.
A new promotional tier, subsidies and SmartPay
The internal Bell document reveals plans to introduce a promotional non-share plan at $70 per month with 5GB of data. It isn't clear if the plan is unlimited or if it has overages after the 5GB is used up. Additionally, there is no U.S. variant listed for the plan.
As far as price goes, it appears the new plans are $20 more per month than what Bell currently has on offer, except for BYOD which is only $10 more. For example, a Premium tier Unlimited 10GB plan with Bell currently costs $95 per month. With the new plan layout, it would cost $115 per month.
In comparison, Telus and Rogers no longer offer subsidized plans, so customers would pay $75 per month for a 10GB unlimited plan plus the monthly installment fee of their financing plan.
On that note, Bell will soon offer device financing options as well. However, the SmartPay plan category has the same options as the subsidized plan category's BYOD tier. In other words, customers will pay $85 per month for a 10GB unlimited plan plus the monthly installment fee of their financing plan. Or, customers can pick the cheaper $70 5GB plan instead, but the details of this plan still aren't clear.
It's important to note that these plans are still subject to change. Bell probably won't introduce them until SmartPay device financing goes live on July 25th, and since the information came from an internal document, things may have or could potentially change.
MobileSyrup has reached out to Bell for clarification regarding the plans. This story will be updated when we receive a response.
