February 11th, 2008When Unlimited isn’t. Rogers shuts off the internet to 3rd party apps.
In the news today, Torontoist calls foul on Roger’s new “unlimited” data plan. Go read. excellent rant. Why is it important?
Among the plan’s many “unlimited” caveats, is this gem:
3rd party applications are applications like Yahoo! Go or Google Maps. These are non-Rogers applications which can be downloaded to the device and incur data charges at a rate of 5ยข/KB – Rogers “Unlimited” browsing plan
In Roger’s case, this isn’t an offer, this is declaring preemptive war on off-deck content. 5cents a kilobyte is $50 a megabyte 3 years, or a prohibitive cost and fear denial-of-audience attack against any non-rogers owned or licensed off-deck applications.
Now all mobile application developers, whether you are Google, an art student or designer experimenting with new modes of interaction, or a kid in the garage with the Next Great Software Idea, you all now have to do a corporate deal with Rogers to have any hope of distribution and mobile usage on the Rogers network.
Where are Bell and Telus in all this? If I were them , there’s tremendous opportunity here to call out the emperors nakedness on data and play the white knight of the industry. There’s a whole internet and mobile ecosystem out there exploding with new (3rd party) mobile services and applications – which your competitor is shutting out. Sounds like a competitive advantage to me.
