It's a recent can&usa thing (was introduced in canada several months ago). It's very likely just a scheme to coerce most subscribers to get a text messaging plan and boost their ARPU by $3 to $10 dollars, since all of the 'plans' have free incoming texts.

I hadn't either, but then I was from the UK. I moved to Canada and they started bringing it in, I was thankful I was on Rogers who didn't introduce it . . . and then the recession hit and they BS-backtracked and implemented it.

Oh well, time to hunt the unlimited smartphone data plans.

Too bad about being in Canada. Canadian data plans suck compared to the US ones. The US doesn't have that much competition for cell plans, but Canada has even less (2 carriers; Bell or Rogers).

Agreed the competition is bad, there are more carriers in ontario, however they're either the big three, or a second brand name for one of the big three (Bell, Rogers and Telus).

Bell has access to the unlimited data plans, and now has a phone worth it (in the Palm Pre). However Bell's customer service is appalling. Basically unless you contact the BBB every time you have a problem, nothing will get done.

Definitely a north-american thing, I have not seen it in any other part of the world.