As the Rogers/Fido iPhone debacle continues there’s some new bad news for mobile users in this country: Bell Canada and Telus Mobility have both announced their intention to charge customers for incoming text messages as of next month.

For anyone not schooled in the etiquette of mobile carriers, this is how it has worked in the rest of the world for the last, oh, decade or so: Subscribers pay for outgoing calls and texts only; to be asked to pay for the receipt of such things would be tantamount to a slap in the face.

And who is the only politician in this country with the power to stop this? God help us all, it’s none other than Hollywood shill Jim Prentice, our Honourable Minister of Doing It Wrong…

Now to be fair Prentice has called upon representatives from both companies to meet with him about this issue, but presumably it’s to find out whether they want him to swallow or not.

NDP leader Jack Layton is taking up the cause with an online petition, but it seems to me that if you sit across the floor from the guy in The House of Commons you should maybe be able to to better than that. Still, it’s better than nothing.

I really hope Ottawa can get with the program on this stuff, if not for Canadians then at least for the international visitors who will hopefully still be visiting for The Winter Olympics in 2010…