March 5th, 2008Surprisingly reasonable PC card plan from Rogers
Rogers is recently selling PC cards connecting to their (theoretical) 3.6MB HSPA. Aside from the fact that there is no usb dongle option, this is good news. And the prices are shockingly reasonable* considering the source. $65 per 1GB of monthly usage. Now this is is before taxes, 911** and system access fees etc., and, already twice the price 1 GB USB dongle that say 3 would sell you in the UK (15pound a month including VAT)… BUT for Canada a 2x is better than the 40x data price disparity we`re used too. The best feature of this plan though is what happen if you go over 1Gb. The plan gracefully, and automatically upgrades you to the next (2GB) plan for only $10 more. This is awesomely customer friendly. The catch -unfortunatley- is that you cannot apply this plan to any other Rogers device or move your SIM card to your blackberry and expect to get away with it.
$10 for an extra GB is also kindof funny considering that Rogers charges $50/MB of overage after the first 10MB of usage on their standard Vision plan. One Gigabyte equals 1024 Megabytes.
1GB of outside internet traffic on a PC card = $65
1GB of outside internet traffic on a standard rogers vision phone plan = 1024 – 10 = 1014MB x $50 = $50,700
Of the two plans, I’d recommend the former. *cough*
According to Alec Saunders, there is an option for not quite the same plan but something close to it if you ask a customer service rep the right questions:
Tom – I saw the same 1, 2, 3 GB plans you did, and phoned Rogers customer service. I explained that I had a sophisticated phone with a 5 megapixel camera, and wanted a suitable dataplan to go on it. The rep suggested a 1 GB plan for $65. I asked if this was the same as the HSPA card plan, and she said no. She wouldn’t sell me the 2 or 3GB plan. Still, it beats the tar out of the old $100 for 200M plan I had on my Blackberry.
An HSPA phone like the N95 with a good plan the ability to “tether” or share it’s internet connection is one way to get the best of both worlds. How to buy a Nokia n95 in Canada.
*Goodluck trying to surf the Rogers site on a firefox browser. It’s a strange animal to them, their web designers and layout engineers have never heard of the beast.
**It`s an excersise for the reader to determine how exactly how to dial 911 on a PC card in the event of an appropriate emergency.
