I purchased a factory-ulocked iPhone from Hong Kong so that I am not forced into the Canadian cellular contracted, locked phone situation.
I requested my current provider, Bell, to transfer my CDMA phone's plan onto my iPhone without data. The Bell Store was very helpful and did it for $22, incl. the price of the SIM card for the iPhone. The Bell Store representatives assured me that it was not possible to incur any data charges because it's simply disabled for my iPhone. The Bell representative even proved her point by starting Safari and showing that a message pops up saying that data plan is not enabled on my package (see screenshot).
I happily left the Bell store.
Fast forward to 3 weeks later, I suddenly notice that I get email messages and my Safari works even without a WiFi network. I look at my usage statistics and see that some data has been transmitted over the cellular data network. I quickly call Bell Canada to ask them what is going on. The Bell Canada representative tells me that (a) they have not changed anything on my account and (b) it is impossible to disable the data plan on the phone.
I told the Bell Canada representative that the data plan was disabled on my phone, and I received a pop up window every time I initiated a data call telling that it is disabled. The representative averted from directly answering the question and became defensive. I was quite upset when I called so it's quite possible that my voice was not the "friendliest ever". So thank her and I hung up...
I waited about an hour to cool down. I called Bell Canada again. This time another representative picks up and I explain to him the situation directly. He gave me the same response with aversive answers to my direct question. I gently persisted this time, which prompted the representative to connect me with the "technical team". The tech person was very short with me, but said that my data plan has been again disabled.
This time I do not receive the same cellular data network disabled message, but the browser and mail applications are not loading any data. It appears now that data has been disabled differently on my phone this time because data does not transmit, but I also do not receive the pop up message I received at the beginning.
This tells me that Bell Canada representatives mis-inform customers by directly telling them that it is impossible to disable the data transmission on the iPhone (and all other phones) even though, if pressed enough, 2 different methods to disable data transmission emerge.
