Going to a coffee shop for wireless internet has just become a battle royale á la the Jets and the Sharks. Last week, Starbucks announced it would offer two hours of free Wi-Fi to its Canadian customers—a feature the Americans have had since a new incentive program Starbucks Rewards was offered in April 2008. Bell will also offer unlimited service to its high-speed and WiMAX customers—and in a cruel move, not Bell dial-up customers.......

People are scamming the city's parking machines to the tune of $1 million per year. Apparently you can use an expired pre-paid credit card to park for free because the machines don't check to see if the cards have credit left on them. The Toronto Parking Authority has known about this since 1998, but hasn't done anything because what the hell—it's only money. Federal industry minister Jim Prentice isn't happy about cellular companies charging......

As we've pointed out many times before, Rogers boasts an exceptional brand of contempt for its non-business wireless customers, but the launch of Apple's desperately anticipated iPhone has exposed a whole set of new lows for the Toronto-based company. Due to a breathtakingly boneheaded policy in place by the company's National Planning Department, existing customers currently under a Rogers contract and who have upgraded their handset within the year are prohibited from purchasing an iPhone. At all....

The wireless spectrum auction being held by Industry Canada to sell off 300 spectrum licenses has closed, with 40% of the spectrum licenses being set aside for new competitors in the wireless industry and $4.25 billion in revenue going to the Feds. The Financial Post speculates that competition will increase and prices will decrease, and also notes that: "It is widely assumed that all new entrants will lease bandwidth space on Rogers' networks." Ever......

Users of modern web browsers are getting used to not having to type in an entire URL to get to the page they want—most new browsers fill in the shorthand, so you can type in "Torontoist," for example, and don't have to worry about the .com suffix. Unless you're on Rogers, that is. Beginning yesterday (for us), Rogers users started getting a browser hijack for any failed DNS requests, which are usually due to......

Photo by Denmar from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Canadian telcos are masters at exploiting customer tolerance limits—when you need a mobile device and are locked into a contract with few alternative options, you're pretty much forced to accept the beatdown levied by one of the three majors. And the carriers benefit greatly by confusing customers, whether it be via despicable "system access fees" or by giving meaningless, unhelpful names to monthly rate plans, like......