has anyone heard or suspect that speakout will change there expiry dates because petro canada did it

Sure. Lots of people speculating about it but no one with authoritative information.

arnt they both owned by ztar? if so wouldnt one follow the other

No and not necessarily. Read my post half a page upthread.

New competition won't have existing infrastructure to build from, nor other services to split the cost of operating and maintaining infrastructure with.

As I understand it, the incumbents are required to make their infrastructure available (on commercial terms) to the newcomers for at least five years. That said, the newcomers could decide to lease only the most essential towers in the most populous urban areas. We'll have to see how this unfolds.

The sad reality of communications in Canada is that you can cover over 90% of the poulation by covering less than 10% of the physical area. The newcomers will concentrate on that 10% of the area which will provide some nasty surprises as people using their services travel and expect the same sorts of "follow me" coverage they get from existing providers, and no benefit whatsoever to folks outside a few densely populated urban areas.

Thanks to all.

if they will change the 365 day expiry

I prefer to be positive about this. A lot of us sent them negative e-mails about the $15 voucher and short expiry date so hopefully they got the message that they shouldn't mess with a good thing.

because petro canada did it back in march and ztar which owns petro canada also owns speakout so im guessing they probably will do the same

ztar doesn't own either PCM or SO. ztar is an MVNO. They buy airtime and other cellphone infrastructure from Rogers, package it into a prepaid service and then sell it through 7-11 as SO and PC gas stations as PCM. I don't know the details of the arrangements they have but, as is currently the case, the specifics of the offerings can differ between SO and PCM. So if 7-11 continues to believe that offering 365 days airtime offers a competitive advantage over PCM they'll continue to do so.

Remember too that the winners of the recent spectrum auction will launch later this year and early next. They too will provide some competition in the pre-paid space.

I am writing to suggest that the $15.00 airtime cards with the 30 day expiry for Speak Out are a very serious affront to your customer base and a ridiculous idea.
A very major fraction if not all of your customers are using SO Phones simply because of the 365 day credits.
The 365 day credit on the $25 top up is as uniquely 7-11 as the Slurpee -- don't mess with either of them.
...ron...

THE REPLY:

We agree and we will be discontinuing this voucher as it was not well received by our customers.

Thanks for the feedback as we are listening.

Askspeakout

...ron...

Is this better or worse? Neither - it's what you prefer. Personally, I prefer our system. The person who pays is the cellphone user, whether it's an incoming or outgoing call. So the person who gets the benefit of a phone that is not locked by cords, etc, is the one that pays. And I like that benefit that here in N.America people calling you do not know whether they are calling a landline or a cellphone, since I prefer only having a cellphone for my business.

Yes but as you can see their expiry is usually around 12 months at least.

Not necessarily. Consider France where it's as little as 15 days and typically only a month or two.

Plus you pay nothing for incoming calls

What's that got to do with credit expiry?

In any case, in Europe you pay by the minute for outgoing landline calls. We don't charge by the minute for those.

Not sure if this is still the case

It's not. See http://www.prepaidgsm.net/