Rogers iPhone pricing released (for real this time)

June 27th, 2008Rogers iPhone pricing released (for real this time)

Posted by Editor in Rogers, datarates, iphone

Rogers as officially released pricing for the iPhone on their network. Those that got excited for the last pricing leak may be disappointed to learn that it was found out to be false/hoax or rather a copy paste of ATT&T pricing. Here is the real scoop:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              Sent      Incoming
                                              Text      Text       Visual
    Price   Voice                    Data     Messages  messages   Voicemail
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    $60 /   150 minutes + unlimited  400 MB   75        Unlimited  Unlimited
    month   Evening and Weekend
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    $75 /   300 minutes + unlimited  750 MB   100       Unlimited  Unlimited
    month   Evening and Weekend
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    $100 /  600 minutes + unlimited  1 GB     200       Unlimited  Unlimited
    month   Evening and Weekend
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    $115 /  800 minutes + unlimited  2 GB     300       Unlimited  Unlimited
    month   Evening and Weekend
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the basic plan will cost plus $15/month for caller ID, plus 6.95 system access fee, probably a $35 activation fee for new subscribers. And $199 for the phone. Overage charges on iPhone data are unclear. The is no unlimited data option.

The phone does come with free wifi at Rogers/fido hotpots at least which is nice at least.

Call it $81.95 a month at minimum with caller ID. Or $3,182 plus GST/PST over the live over the 3 year contract.

For comparison, AT&T will be offering unlimited data on the iPhone for $30/month with a voice plan and a two year contract.

O2 in the UK will be offering the phone with unlimited data and 75min/8 month contracts for $60 a month or a free iphone with a $90 1500min/18month contract.

UPDATE: Overage charges are $30 ($0.50/MB) for the first 60MB in overage and $0.03/MB after that. Official iphone pricing page on Rogers.com.

Mark Kuznicki

Oh, and you should add this little gem from the fine-print: early termination of the contract will trigger a cancellation fee of MINIMUM of $1,100!! Unbelievable, but true: http://www.rogers.com/cms/html/iphone_vpterms.shtml. Theoretically, you would have to pay almost $8,000 if you had to cancel right after you bought it...more than the total value of the contract!!
Mark Kuznicki

I, like many, was super-eager for the official iPhone release in Canada and willing to break my Telus contract to get it right away. No longer - I'm keeping my Telus/Razr/iPod Touch/wifi combo until I see a plan for iPhone that isn't designed to play gotcha with overage fees.

I note that http://ruinediphone.com/ already has over 18,000 signatures (and a new and less offensive domain), so I guess I'm not alone. I don't expect Rogers will do anything in response, but the level of customer frustration appears to be a story in and of itself, which might provide some additional insight into the zeitgeist of the Canadian wireless marketplace. I hope to see a story about the budding consumer backlash on WirelessNorth soon! :)
Yule Heibel

I just tried surfing over to http://www.ruinediphone.com/ (which I had no trouble accessing earlier), and got a 403 Forbidden message. What happened? Was it hacked?, did Rogers shut it down?, or is it a temporary glitch because several million Canadians are flooding the site, trying to sign the anti-rogers petition? Even the pages still in my browser history return 403 Forbidden...

:-/
Mike M

I was wondering about using the Rogers Portable Internet with an iPhone. As long as you are in range of the box - you could power it in your car with a small inverter - you would have a hot spot that followed you wherever you go, give 30 Gig data for $50/month and also be useful for a computer as well. The bonus is it might get Rogers to break its bad habits of charging too much for data plans. If they are selling personal TV plans they must have lots of data to sell. They just want to charge more for some data.
netrokid

What can we do to put pressure on our Govt' to start either regulating the prices, or allowing US providers to enter our market? Although I do recognize the fact that at least Rogers creates jobs, I think it is utterly ridiculous that they can control the GSM mobile market in such a monopolistic manner. If they were regulated by any kind of quality control for their customer service, they would most likely go out of business. They offer preferential pricing and service to certain customers (I know this because I've managed to get certain packages by spending over 6 hours on the phone with them). Isn't that illegal?

What also really gets to me is that I don't see how Canada's youth will be able to play with new technology due to the price barriers. How do we expect the next generation of entrepreneurs to innovate if they can't access the technology?

If anyone has any ideas on what can be done to put pressure, please advise. Perhaps WirelessNorth could post some sort of form letter that would be sent to the proper members of Govt or CRTC? (Sorry to lay this on you guys- but you're so good at this :))
Left_Wing_Fox

Yeah, I've been incredibly eager for an iPhone. AT&T's pricing is reasonable for me. Rogers is absolutely unacceptable.

I rarely use my phone. I have no land-line, and a pay as you go plan from Aliant, and I still pay about than $10/month on average to use that phone. The iPhone would replace many of the devices I currently carry on a trip (phone, iPod, Camera, portable games/books) and duplicates almost all the use I get out of my laptop.

There is no way I'd use 800 minutes of voice phone, and I'd go over 2GB in a heartbeat. I'm better off getting an iPod Touch, and using that at Wi-Fi hotspots instead.
James Blair

As a Canadian who spent the last 8 years in the US, I'm actually embarassed for us. I'm not sure who I am most upset by though - Rogers for being dirty, greedy monkeys or the CRTC for being asleep at the switch.

The worst part is that I can see poor, helpless Canadians say "oh, the iPhone, it's cool. I will buy that" and wind up with two unimaginably painful surprises. The first being their 1st months bill = $500 ("but I only downloaded 5 songs and watched 3 videos"). The second being their attempts to cancel their service ("what do you mean I still have 35 months left? is this a car lease or a phone contract").
Rick

1) I can't find confirmation on a three year contract on the Rogers site. Anyone?
2) 400M for $60 is not unlimited but very usable. Everyone I know with an iPhone who is doing heavy youtube does it via WiFi. For regular HMTL pages I think that's going to be fine. Not great but cmon, a Blackberry data plan is something like 1M for $45 and it goes way more expensive really quick for very little data.
3) What's this Rogers Hotspot support?!? Does the Canadian iPhone support regular old WiFi?
tj

Rogers Hotspot abit of a joke for British Columbians, there's 7 locations in all mostly Second Cup coffee shops and only three of those are in the lower mainland, none in the city where I live which is Surrey. By comparison Telus and Bell have dozens of more spots.
midtoad

@Rick, all iPhones are identical, so far as I know. The Wifi can be used to connect to any open network, or secured networks that you have the key for. In the case of the Rogers Hotspots, I have to admit I'm guessing here, but they'll probably find a way for you to log in with your iPhone number and automatically be granted permission. Meanwhile, with my iPod Touch at the same hotspot, I'd have to pay $$/day.

I guess if you spend a lot of time in coffee shops, the free hotspot use could be helpful. But if you're one of those people, you could just buy an iPod Touch, have NO CONTRACT, and the monthly access fee for that hotspot will cost less than the iPhone data plan and have unlimited bandwidth. So, it's not much of a gift.
TJ

Thats gonna have to be some crazy usage Zach. Even with the 2GB option where you pay $115 for 2GB, and then another $30 for 60MB, that should leave $29,855 in overage above 60MB, or rather 995,166MB (971 GB). But yeah I get your point, I'm pretty cynical about this as well. While it certainly is a step up, I wouldn't give credit to Robbers for this at all, this pricing scheme is still unfair. I'm more interested in what Till-us and Bill will do now.
Zach

I can't wait for the news articles that describe how a Rogers iPhone customer was charged $30,000 for the same amount of usage that his cousin in Boston got for like $60.
Jim

I expected nothing less from Rogers. They try to squeeze every cent of of the customer. That's their way.. always has been, always will be.

Simple solution, don't buy the iPhone. Really, it's just a phone... who cares.
Kashif

Continuing my last post, that means new pricing is not exclusive to iPhones.
Kashif

Well you have to give Rogers credit for giving us better data plans.

Before I could get a BlackBerry Pearl with $45 dollars/month includes 4MB data + 150 weekday minutes. Now I can get a voice plan for $30 (includes 150 weekday/unlimited ev/weekend) + a 300MB data plan for $30. Total $60/month.

With a 3 year contract, the Pearl is $49 where the iPhone is $199.
Dan

Yes I honestly thought that Apple would be able to strongarm Rogers into offering unlimited data. Keep in mind that almost every app on the iPhone uses data and the user has NO WAY to monitor usage, so you will be constantly have this little worry in the back of your mind and you will never be able to just enjoy it. Looks like evil really does always win over good.

The iPhone is just not usable without an unlimited data plan period.
Andrew

Agreed. So much for Canada's mobile revolution :-(
omarismail

While it's not the unlimited of AT&T did anyone HONESTLY expect that? Honestly?

No, I think this is all rather disappointingly unsurprising. And I'll be locking myself in, begrudgingly.
Randy

I think Telus just got a new Blackberry customer.
t1m

Wow, Fido has detailed exactly how much data 400MB is:

400 MB up to 200,000 text emails or 3,100 web pages or
1,360 photo attachments

That sounds awesome!!! I mean 200,000 emails! I don't think i've sent 200,000 emails in my whole life!!! That should be lots of data for a guy like me!

uh, oh wait, that's only 2 minutes on youtube.com ....
roland

ah yeah the bandwidth ol*gopoly strikes again. these prices are a r*poff compared to AT&T. yes I know we have a larger country and small amount of people, but compared to smaller countries like australia this is bad! also some transparency on why the charges have to be so high would be helpful!

Wirelessnorth.ca

June 27th, 2008Rogers iPhone pricing released (for real this time)

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