r/planhub

🛜 B.C. is getting a major rural broadband expansion

The Canada Infrastructure Bank and partners are committing $379 million to expand broadband access in British Columbia.

As part of the agreement, the CIB will provide a $49.3 million loan to TELUS to help deploy fibre-to-the-home internet in underserved rural and Indigenous communities.

The project is expected to bring high-speed internet access to more than 17,000 households, including approximately 380 Indigenous households.

This is not a flashy phone-plan deal. It is the other side of Canada’s connectivity problem: basic access.

For rural households, better broadband can affect work, school, healthcare, business, emergency communication and whether a community can fully participate in the digital economy.

Apple is reportedly planning at least five new iPhone models between late 2026 and early 2027, including its first foldable iPhone.

The strategy looks simple: hit Android rivals from multiple angles at once.

A foldable iPhone would finally put Apple directly against Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold line, while a broader iPhone lineup could help Apple cover more premium and mid-premium buyers.

The supply-chain is just as interesting. Reports say Apple has increased its foldable iPhone production target to around 10 million units, even as Android manufacturers deal with pressure from memory shortages and rising component costs.

The question is not just “what new iPhone is coming?”

It is: how expensive is the next smartphone cycle going to get?

Foldables, AI features, premium screens and higher memory costs could push flagship phones even deeper into luxury-tech territory.

That makes BYOD plans, refurbished phones and last-year models more relevant than ever.

The CRTC’s ban on activation and plan-change fees took effect on June 12.

Rogers and Fido now charge $40 for specialist-assisted phone purchases completed in stores, over the phone or through live chat. Customers can avoid the fee by completing the purchase online.

Bell has a separate $40 Device Handling Charge connected to phone orders, while TELUS introduced a $15 charge for both physical SIM cards and eSIMs.

The CRTC is already challenging Bell and TELUS. Both companies have until June 17 to confirm they stopped charging the fees or explain why they believe the charges qualify as optional products or services.

Rogers has not yet publicly received the same formal warning.

The central issue is whether these are genuine optional services or activation fees reconstructed around phones, SIM cards and employee assistance.

May your signal be strong, your data last, and your roaming fees stay asleep.

Lenovo’s new AI Student Phone is built around a very different idea: what if a child’s first phone was not a tiny entertainment machine?

The device, launched in China, removes games, web browsers and social media apps. Instead, it focuses on voice and video calls, location tracking, emergency contact features, classroom mode and AI-assisted learning.

There is even a dedicated AI button that lets students ask questions or get homework help without opening a full browser.

For parents: keep kids connected without handing them an endless scroll portal.

Are we heading toward a new category of “controlled phones” for kids, where the device is designed around learning, safety and limits instead of maximum engagement?

After years of trying to manage screen time with apps and parental controls, Lenovo is trying the harder version: change the phone itself.

Public Mobile is currently advertising a Canada-wide 5G plan with 80GB of data for $35/month.

The offer is listed as ending July 1, so this is a short-window promo for people looking to switch or upgrade before Canada Day.

80GB at $35 is aggressive for a 5G plan, especially for users who stream, hotspot, travel around Canada or just want more data without jumping into a premium Big 3 plan.

As always, check the fine print before switching: eligibility, speed details, province availability, autopay requirements and whether the price is promotional or ongoing.

Following up on Planhub's post on CRTC 2026-155: here's the part of the story I think doesn't get told enough. This is a response to the 40 people who bombarded my inbox this week asking about it.

Planhub did a good job laying out the structure of the proceeding. I want to fill in some of the technical and economic blanks, because once you see those, the "we're just recovering legitimate costs" defense the Big 3 are running falls apart immediately.

1. TELUS pinned themselves on the SIM argument

The Commission's prohibition exempts "additional products or services... not required for the delivery of the telecommunications service."

In TELUS's own June 17 response to the CRTC, they wrote that a SIM is "a component of terminal equipment" without which "a wireless device cannot access a wireless carrier's network."

So by TELUS's own words, a SIM is REQUIRED for the delivery of the service. Which is literally the test the Commission's exemption rules out. TELUS argued themselves straight out of their own exemption. We cited that exact paragraph back at them in our intervention.

2. The eSIM cost reality nobody wants to say out loud

There's a real difference between a physical SIM and an eSIM. A physical SIM is a chip with manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping costs. An eSIM is a software profile generated by a server. There is no card, no warehouse, no truck, nothing physical changes hands.

A small carrier like us pays $0.50 to $2 per eSIM profile to a third-party SM-DP+ vendor. TELUS, at their volume, almost certainly pays a fraction of that, and they likely operate their own SM-DP+ in-house, which collapses the per-profile cost to effectively zero.

A $15 retail "eSIM purchase fee" charged to a customer is not cost recovery. It is profit on a digital good that costs the carrier pennies to produce.

3. The numbers nobody is using as a headline

Bell's parent (BCE) made $24,468,000,000 in revenue in 2025. TELUS made $20,506,000,000. Rogers made $21,712,000,000. Combined: over $66 billion.

The maximum AMP under the Act is $10,000,000 per company. That is approximately 0.04% of one carrier's annual revenue. Less than half a percent of net income for any of them.

If the CRTC imposes anything less than the maximum, it is a license fee for ongoing violation, not a deterrent. The Big 3 have already shown they are willing to keep charging these fees in open defiance of the prohibition. The only way this regulation has teeth is if the AMP actually bites at their scale.

4. Personal liability is the only thing they're actually scared of

Section 72.008 of the Telecommunications Act lets the CRTC find individual officers and directors personally liable for up to $25,000 each. That is nothing to BCE or Rogers as companies. But $25,000 out of an executive's own pocket, plus the reputational headline of being personally found liable under federal telecom law, is the part of this that actually deters people.

The conduct under investigation happened on the watch of three named CEOs: Mirko Bibic at BCE, Darren Entwistle at TELUS (who retires June 30, but the personal AMP follows him regardless of retirement), and Tony Staffieri at Rogers.

Our intervention asked the CRTC to find personal liability against all three.

5. The next move (we predicted in writing)

This is the part I really hope gets attention. If the CRTC kills these activation-side fees today, the Big 3 will try to bring back equivalent dollars under a new label tomorrow.

The most likely target: suspension or disconnection fees on customers who are mid-port to a competing carrier. A carrier that can't charge you to activate has every commercial incentive to charge you to leave.

We asked the CRTC, in our intervention, to declare in advance in this proceeding, right now that any suspension, disconnection, or reconnection fee charged on a porting customer is a fee whose main purpose is to discourage switching, and is therefore already prohibited under section 27.04(1) of the Act on exactly the same logic as these activation fees.

Slam the loophole shut before they walk through it.

Why I'm posting this

Planhub covered how the proceeding works and how to file. I won't repeat that. The thing I want to add is: the Big 3 have professional regulatory teams writing carefully-crafted defensible-sounding submissions. The CRTC needs to hear the substance too, not just the procedure.

If you've been charged any of these fees, file a short letter. It does not have to be a legal brief. Even one paragraph supporting maximum AMPs, personal CEO liability, and a pre-emptive ruling on suspension fees gets read by the Commission.

PC Mobile is currently advertising a $25/month 5G plan with 25GB of data, plus 20,000 PC Optimum points as a welcome bonus and 10% back every month.

It is a telecom deal wrapped inside the PC Optimum ecosystem.

For budget shoppers, the math is interesting: lower monthly price, 5G data, prepaid-style flexibility, and rewards points that can be used across the PC Optimum network.

There is also a separate flash offer showing 10,000 PC Optimum points on a SIM card purchase in store until July 1.

Quebecor is pushing back against Corus Entertainment’s proposed restructuring, arguing that the broadcaster should be taken over by experienced media players rather than effectively handed to creditors.

The fight is now before the CRTC.

Corus wants approval for a recapitalization plan that would see lenders forgive about $500 million in debt in exchange for 99% ownership of a new parent company. Canso Investment Counsel is expected to become the largest shareholder.

Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau argues that Corus represents essential Canadian media infrastructure, and that weakening Corus as an independent media force could leave Bell in an even more dominant position in English-language broadcasting.

This is not just a corporate finance story.

Corus owns Global News, dozens of radio stations, specialty channels and conventional TV stations across Canada. The decision could shape local news, media concentration, Canadian content and who controls major English-language broadcasting assets.

The CRTC file is now one to watch.

Fizz is currently showing a $40 referral-code discount on its Quebec site, with the offer listed as available until July 7.

For Quebec users: sign up with a referral code and save $40, while still getting Fizz’s usual prepaid-style features like no commitment, no activation fee, and flexible plans.

Before switching, check the province selector, the checkout page and the final monthly price.

Samsung’s next foldable lineup is starting to leak from multiple directions, and the most interesting model may be the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra.

According to recent leaks, Samsung could be preparing a higher-end Fold8 Ultra with an improved screen resolution, a larger battery, faster charging and an ultra-thin design. Regulatory listings also suggest the next wave of foldables is getting close to launch.

The real angle is the price.

A Korean leak claims Samsung’s next foldable lineup could launch at higher prices in some markets, partly because of rising manufacturing, memory and storage costs.

Foldables are already among the most expensive smartphones consumers can buy. If the Fold Ultra line moves even higher, the question becomes simple: how much more can premium phones cost before they turn into luxury tech instead of mainstream upgrades?

This also makes last year’s foldables, refurbished devices and BYOD plans much more interesting.

They offered me this plan for $50 with all my discounts I’m paying $25 so 50% I guess

- $5 auto pay

- $20 disability discount credit

Which makes it $25

Btw I’m reposting this without the Ai made photo so you guys stop assuming I’m faking it
Also this plan is on the website so I’m not lying ether!

Gander, a new Canadian social media platform, says it will officially launch nationwide on July 1 as an alternative to foreign-owned social networks.

The company says the app already has more than 18,000 members and is backed by 2,517 Canadian investors.

Its pitch is very Canadian-tech-core: healthier conversations, stronger communities, human verification, less bot activity, no surveillance advertising, no sale of personal data, and Canadian data kept in Canada.

The bigger question: can a Canadian platform actually break through in a social media world dominated by Meta, TikTok, X, Reddit and YouTube?

Even if Gander stays niche, the timing is interesting. Canadians are talking more about data sovereignty, algorithmic outrage, privacy, platform dependency and who controls the digital spaces where public conversations happen.

A small app, maybe. But a very 2026 question.

Not breaking news, more of a follow-up/watchdog thread.

The CRTC’s ban on activation/modification fees took effect on June 12. Since then, the focus has mostly been on Rogers, Bell and Telus, but that misses a big part of how Canada’s wireless market actually works.

Customers don’t only see “the Big Three.” They see dozens of brands.

Rogers family: Rogers, Fido, chatr
Bell family: Bell, Virgin Plus, Lucky Mobile
Telus family: Telus, Koodo, Public Mobile
Quebecor/Vidéotron family: Vidéotron, Fizz, Freedom Mobile
Regional/MVNO layer: Eastlink, SaskTel, Tbaytel, Cogeco Mobile, PC/No Name Mobile and others

And the network/antenna situation makes it even more confusing.

Some brands are just flankers owned by the same parent company.
Some are prepaid brands running on the same network.
Some are regional carriers with their own towers plus roaming deals.
Some are MVNOs that sell service but use another carrier’s network.

So when a fee shows up at Fido, Virgin, Lucky, Koodo, Public, chatr, Fizz or another brand, it should not be treated as separate from the bigger carrier ecosystem.

Confirmed examples already worth watching:

Bell / Virgin Plus: $40 device handling charge
Rogers / Fido: $40 device setup charge
Telus: $15 SIM/eSIM fee
Freedom Mobile: appears to have backed off on some fees/requirements after the CRTC ban

That last one matters. If one carrier can adjust after the rule, why are others trying to preserve similar fees under new names?

Are activation fees disappearing, or are they being renamed across the whole Canadian wireless brand maze?

If you were charged anything since June 12, please comment with:

Brand:
Parent company/network, if known:
Fee name:
Amount:
Date:
Online, store, phone or chat:
Was it waived?

Sakana Al, founded by ex-Google researchers David Ha and Llion Jones, released Fugu as an OpenAl-compatible API that dynamically orchestrates closed and open models for complex tasks. Fugu Ultra shines on benchmarks like 73.7% on SWE-Bench Pro, rivaling restricted U.S. systems such as Anthropic's Fable 5, with demos showing it optimizing GPU experiments and building CAD designs. CEO Ha promotes 'Al sovereignty' through resilient routing, and early users praise its multi-step workflows for coding and analysis, though skeptics await independent verification.

Mistral AI says it plans to release a new open-weight model this summer, with early access expected in July.

The company is leaning hard into the sovereignty angle: instead of relying only on closed APIs from U.S. giants, governments and companies could deploy and control models more directly.

That’s probably where Mistral has its strongest argument right now: not just “we have another chatbot,” but “you can actually own and audit part of the stack.”

Europe’s AI pitch is becoming less about hype and more about control.

The Five Eyes intelligence (pdf) alliance is warning that new frontier AI models could rapidly change the cyber threat landscape.

Officials from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand say advanced AI may soon boost both offensive hacking and defensive cybersecurity capabilities.

The timeline they’re talking about is not “years away.” They’re warning it could be months.

The advice is still basic but urgent: patch systems faster, reduce exposed infrastructure and use AI defensively to find vulnerabilities before attackers do.

The scary part is not that AI invents hacking. It’s that it may compress the time, skill and cost needed to launch more complex attacks.