All Articles Tagged data rates

This morning I mentioned the so-called “leaked” Rogers memo, which outlined almost find-and-replace identical data plans to those AT&T is offering for the iPhone was too good to be true, and now Kevin from our sister-site Crackberry.com brings us a Rogers presentation which puts another nail in the “we hope for fair data rates” coffin:

Non-flex plan: $15 for 2MB (hitting the YouTube button once?), $25 for 4MB, $30 for 300MB, $60 for 1GB, $80 for 3GB, and $100 for 6GB?!

Flex plan: $50 for 500MB, $65 for 1GB, $85 for 3GB, and $100 for 5GB?!

(Remembering the US in $30 for UNLIMITED!)

A 5GB cap, similar to caps some European countries have put in place for the iPhone 2G is annoying enough, but charging 3.33x more money along with the cap? Outrageous.

Kevin points out that Rogers currently charges $60 for 25MB, and this is better. But being slightly less @#$%-up is not really better. Sadly, unlike Vader or the Hulk, my hatred renders me no more powerful.

I hope these aren’t the iPhone rates. I hope we get something better. But this stinks to high heaven of Rogers historical behavior, and there’s no better indicator of future behavior than that.

UPDATE:

Engadget Mobile is saying there will be exclusive plans for the iPhone on Rogers.

X1Zero over on the iPhone in Canada forum has posted the following under “tasty” news, based on what he claims is new Rogers training material:

Here were the prices listed for [iPhone] plans [including voice and data]: “$60, $65, $70, $75, $80, $85″. What I gather from this is as long as you have at least a $30 voiceplan, you then pick your poison of either $30 or $45 iphone data, and youre golden.

Gander at the original Rogers slide in question (after the break)…

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I should have put this into my post yesterday about the Top 5 Reasons I’m SO Upgrading to the iPhone 3G, but it didn’t completely sink in until just now that this was really an issue for some people. It was that off my radar — but I guess it shouldn’t have been, given this is the blogsphere.

DaringFireball did the math and figured that, even if the iPhone 3G costs some $200 less upfront than it’s 2G ancestor, due to AT&T charging $10 more per month for 3G data, and potentially $5 more for SMS, that works out to $240 or $360 more over the course of the mandatory 2 year (24 month) contract, and ends up making the overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership/Operation) some $40 to $160 more for the iPhone 3G than the previous generation model.

But here’s the thing. TCO is only one buzz acronym. Another is ROI — Return on Investment. No cell phone at all is cheaper than the iPhone, but what functionality do you give up by not having a mobile device? Dial-up (analogous to 2.5/2.75G EDGE service) is cheaper than broadband (analogous to 3G HSPDA service), but what amount of productivity (not to mention patience!) do you lose to the slower speed? Cell/Wi-Fi “triangulation” is included in the old iPhone, and thus cheaper than the A-GPS in the iPhone 3G, but what features — including new App Store apps — will you lose out on by not having precise location services?

There will always be cheaper. You can probably pick up a great deal on a 486 running Windows 3.1 if you look hard enough. But cheaper is not always better. If it was, that Internet University that keeps spamming everyone would look better on a CV than Harvard, Starbucks would have gone broke long ago, and a Yaris would smoke the Reventon on a straight away!

In the end, you typically get what you pay for, and new usually costs more than old (until newer comes along and continues the cycle). AT&T (and other carriers) are no doubt subsidizing the heck out of the iPhone 3G, and are making that money back via the service plans. That’s their business. Our business is deciding whether the handset that comes with that service is worth what they’re asking for it.

$40 over 2 years for an iPhone 3G? For that investment you get a 3G speed and A-GPS location services (not to mention a flush headphone jack!) return.

TCO be d@mned, that’s a pretty compelling ROI.

Although Rogers Wireless, the GSM monopoly and hence both de facto and exclusive iPhone 3G carrier in Canada has yet to announce rate plans for Apple’s second generation data monster, they have let slip the following in their PR:

Starting July 11, iPhone 3G will sell for $199 for the 8Gb model and $299 for the 16Gb model, on a three-year plan.

That’s right, 3 (three!) big years for the contract as opposed to 2 years in the US, or 18 months and even Pay-as-You-Go in Europe. Who said we were the new world?

We’ve already discussed some of the challenges that previously faced the iPhone in Canada, now we have confirmed release date, confirmed handset price, and all that remains is confirmation on what have been, until now, globally ridiculous data rates.

Come one Rogers. You’ve come this far. Don’t spoil it now with something silly like $100 a month for 1GB. Give us the 3G Unlimited for $30, just like the US.

I’d have more faith, but it’s not like the Canadian government has anything remotely resembling consumer interests at heart, not with their new DMCA — set for introduction today — which includes provisions “Making it illegal to unlock cellphones or copy music from protected CDs to iPods.”

Thanks Antonic for the tip!

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I’m not going to get off on another Rogers rant here. Suffice it to say, when it comes to Canadian telcos, I’m the rat who, having learned helplessness, now lies face down on the hot plate.

However, not content to let me lie there and wither in peace, now comes this report, determined to kick poor downed me with some hope:

Sources from inside Rogers claim that the device should be available the same month as an expected US release of an updated, 3G-capable model [...] currency values are likely to place the cost of the phone itself closer to the eventual US figure. [...] The sources claim that the iPhone will qualify for Rogers’ $7 on-device browsing plan, which currently allows all phones offered by Rogers (excepting BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices) to access the web as much as they like through the carrier’s officially-sanctioned browser. Whether Rogers will allow YouTube, the App Store, and other official but non-web devices to fall into the unlimited plan is unknown, though unlike with other phones Rogers will not have the choice of installing or customizing the web browser or other applications.

We’ll see (or more likely, we won’t see). The best indicator of future behavior being prior behavior, I figure the iPhone data plan will cost $100/month for 1GB. Prove me wrong, Rogers!

What do you think?

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It’s morning; the dull Canadian sun seeps in through the blinds and the alarm sounds on my iPhone. I flip over, swipe to silence, grab the phone from off the side table, and quickly check my email for anything urgent. The weather widget shows clear skies, Twitter is abuzz with the latest SDK updates, and PhoneDifferent.com tells me Apple made a bit of money this year. Closing the browser, I flip on a podcast for some easy-learning and try to decide whether the day needs facing.

Sounds pretty normal, right? Actually, it’s still pretty revolutionary, really. One device to rule them all, as the meme goes. The iPhone. Apple’s gift to the mobile world. And something that, as a Canadian, I can’t legitimately own or use.

Biggest NAFTA- and Free Trade-powered partner, friendliest borders in the world, and seemingly endless source of hot singers and gifted comedians, and while we Canadians can buy every other bit of gear Apple produces, we get absolutely no iPhone love.

Why is that exactly? Read on.

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