Bell is increasing the price of its BYOD small business plans (update)

Bell plans to increase the price of various aspects of some of its small business BYOD plans, according to a new bill obtained by MobileSyrup.

Starting in June 2018, the carrier says it will increase the price of seven out-of-market BYOD small business plans by $5 per month. Additionally, the price of its unlimited Canada-U.S./international text messaging feature is increasing by $2 per month. The carrier is also increasing its small business data overage rate from $0.05 per megabyte to $0.07 per megabyte, bringing the overage rate inline with what it charges consumers.

By way of justification for the price hikes, Bell says increased supplier prices and network usage, by a magnitude of 30 percent, have necessitated “us to increase our rates for a smaller number of our products.”

“Recently, Bell was the first wireless provider in Canada to successfully hit Gigabit LTE-Advanced speeds in testing. We have Canada’s best national network, and it keeps getting better,” wrote Helena Cain, Bell’s vice-president of customer services and sales, in a notice to customers.

“We will be making some price adjustments to our small business BYOD plans beginning in June. Small business customers will continue to have access to a wide variety of plans at competitive rates to meet their usage requirements and budgets,” said a Bell spokesperson when asked to comment on the increase.

Is your small business affected by the increases? Let us know in the comment section.

Update 18/04/18: Bell contacted MobileSyrup to clarify that it is only increasing the price of some of its BYOD small business plans, not all of them. Specifically, the carrier says it plans to increase the price of seven older and expired BYOD plans to “bring them up to in-market pricing levels.”

Bell went on to further clarify that it is only increasing the overage rate associated with out-of-market plans to bring them in line with its in-market plans.