April 23rd, 2008Why the wifi-equiped curve isn’t coming to Rogers
On the announcement of Wifi calling coming to Rogers, Martin asks “Great news! What about the Curve 8320?”. Don’t hold your breath.
As far as I know Rogers has expressed no signs of interest in the curve with wifi. As a RIM insider told WirelessNorth.ca, it’s been a hell of a job for them to convince any North American carrier to accept a handset with wifi. [notwithstanding that wifi-equiped nokias are plentiful in Europe and you can even buy skype plans for your n95 at hotspots all over london but we digress]. For Rogers, the pearl and home wifi calling would seem to be the comprimise.
The pearl is a consumer brand blackberry. This lets Rogers keep the wifi safely segmented to the consumer market and keep on gouging maximising return on corporate customers higher dependence and lower price sensitivity to blackberry voice and data rates.
What can you do about it? Put some Rogers stock in your RRSP. You’ll feel better about it.
ps. Don’t expect blackberry wifi from Bell or Telus either. For reasons unclear, the CDMA version of current blackberries come with GPS instead of wifi.
