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Still waiting for your iPhone 3GS? You are not alone. Since the launch of apple’s swankiest new unit we’ve seen the waiting list stretching out months for anyone foolheardy enough to have ordered one online, or from a Rogers call center rep. Rogers retail stores do have them, but only in handfuls at a time. One store rep we spoke with said he was only getting a third of the number of devices they were requesting on a weekly basis.

The reason? The iPhone is costing Rogers too much. Apple’s elegant one $199 price doesn’t jibe with Rogers subscriber revenue. Or at least the math doesn’t jibe as well with the kind of margins that Rogers has gotten used to earning off of smartphone subscribers. Rogers is suffering margin compression with the iPhone 3GS. While they love the halo effect of the iPhone, they’d love even more if they could lure you in the store with thoughts of iPhone dancing in your head… and then sell you the exact same voice and data plan but fob you off on, say, a much less subsidized HTC Android for example.

We don’t know if Rogers is revenue sharing on the iPhone with Apple but, apparently, the difference between the actual price of the device and mandated $199 subsidized price is such that Rogers is going so far as to aggressively market the Android down to $79 (and $39 for students).

This is not such a bad story for consumers. The android is a half-decent device, and $39/$79 is the kind of entry point for smartphones that could really start driving penetration of smart phones in Canada (if not, you know, for those whopper monthly bills you’ll still enjoy but we digress). And a few more androids or blackberries in the global marketshare pie chart does help to keep apple honest.

We’ve all been there before, you have 3 months left in your cell phone contract after years of being a customer of one of the carriers, and now you need out. Each carrier in Canada has a different get-out-of-jail fee to break their contracts and Rogers has always been one of the most expensive, but never any more egregious than you’d expect.

Well, we’ve all been complaining that Rogers’ pricing hasn’t changed much with their new iPhone plans, but now I have proof that they have changed.

Instead of a smaller fee like 200$ to break up, Rogers now locks you in for 220$ a MONTH, or $1100, whichever is more. The price can then, on a 3-year contract, easily go up as high as $7,770.

You may be thinking “I’ll never need to pay that”, but you never know. 36 months is a long time to be locked in to a contract, and with penalties like this, you have to think about things like job security before you buy that shiny new Apple iPhone.

This is not normal behaviour, the iPhone is now not only expensive, but completely unattractive. Why? Lets recap:

1. You have to sign a 3-year contract
2. It is a device designed for massive amounts of bandwidth, but you are limited to low data usage caps
3. There are high overage fees if you use more data than Rogers allows
4. You have to take the voice plan they offer with the phone, you can’t choose another Rogers voice plan
5. You have to pay an insane amount for Caller ID
6. System Access fee is alive and well
7. You have to pay $1100 cash if you life changes in any significant way in the next 3 years, that goes up to as high as $7,770 if you have more than 5 months remaining on your contract.

What about you? Are you going to buckle under the pressure and go ahead and get one? Is the temptation too much? I know I have passed the point of no return on this puppy. I’ll stick with my 1st-Gen iPhone and use a few Wifi Hotspots.

How many of those 20,000+ people will really boycott the iPhone? How many signed the petition, but still won’t be able to resist the lure of the amazing iPhone?

[UPDATE July2/08: Rogers has now corrected their cancellation disclaimers which now read "The ECF is the greater of (ii) $100 or (iii) $20 per month remaining in the service agreement, to a maximum of $400 (plus applicable taxes), and applies on each line in the plan that is terminated." The new terms are far better than the nonsensical figures previously published. However, at 3 years in length, it is worth remembering that Rogers contracts (similar to other Canadian Carriers) are still 50% to 100% longer than every other jurisdiction on the planet offering the iphone.

Flushed with hope, WirelessNorth.ca recently inquired of Rogers whether our regular blackberry bill of last month was also just another typo of tragicomic proportions. But apparently not. - ED]

Great news the new 3G iPhone is live on Apple Canada online store. The catch? you can’t get one until (at least) July 11th and the device isn’t listed with any price. Seems like those slow production problem rumours were true. As of this moment, Rogers has yet to issue a press release with further details. Steve swears that the entry price will be no higher, anywhere on the planet, than 199US (that’s pretty cheap, nokia & blackberry look out). Paying no attention of course to what the obligatory contract will cost you over the length (cough) of the contract. The apple.ca store has also in recent times had some pretty curious ideas about how much 1 US dollar converts to in CAD these days. So 199USD could mean $209 or $219CAD

The biggest news with the new iPhone? it’s thinner, it’s faster, it’s (claimed) to have better battery life, it has pretty cool looking geolocation features … and … it’s all about killer 3rd party apps. Some pretty cool ones too.

Let us say this again: It’s all about killer 3rd party apps.

Is it finally time for Canadian carriers to wake up and smell the future?

UPDATE: More good news: Rogers and Apple Canada will be sticking to 199, 299 pricing. The bad: Why would they quible over entry price when the contract length is 3 long years (specific contract pricing is still unknown, however, guaranteed it will be $3,000+ over 3 years, and… iPhone 5.0 will be out by the time your contract is). The ugly: Availbility is still a big question mark. The apple site is suggesting you may have to buy the phone in-store. You may be in for nintendo wii-like shortages and chasing for stock around the city. Thanks to all wrote in with PR links!

• It will be a 3G device on Rogers HSDPA network
• It will continue to have mediocre battery life (Though Jobs will make some claims to the contrary)
• The entry price will be $50 or $100 higher than whatever ATT&T or the Apple US store charges for the same model. Currency parity? The Apple store has never heard of it.
• It will come with a 3 year contract. Standard for Canada, but one year longer than any other jurisdiciton on the planet.
• It will come in June
• It will have a 1GB data cap
• Pricing packages including voice minutes, data, messaging & system access fee will start at a minimum of $80CAD a month before taxes (Rogers ARPU sits at nearly $75, no way they’ll let a flagship device bring down the mean)
• This means each iPhone will earn Rogers (cost you) about $3300 over the life of the contract. Yowza.
• With the speed of HSPA, web applications on the iPhone will get (more) awesome
• With no physical keyboard, addoption by enterprise and business users will still not really happen
• In the consumer segment, the device will give the Bold a run for it’s money (a device you shouldn’t expect to be cheap either)

I made the trek out to the Rogers Headquarters this morning to cover the launch of the Nokia N95. I was sent in place of Tom because he is gone to sail a boat around the Carribean. Tough life.

I had secretly hoped that Rogers would unveil some sort of new pricing scheme, something that would be a preview of the monthly pricing for the upcoming iPhone. No such luck.

The N95, which was first released in March of 2007 (just over a year ago), is a fine phone. Everyone I know who has had one in the past year has loved it. In typical Nokia style, it is very hacker friendly as it runs Symbian, and you can install everything from games to your own webserver on it.

It is no secert: The N95 is a killer phone that looks great and we all wish we could have. It easily rivals the iPhone in everything except popularity, although the 10 million N-Series phones Nokia sold last quarter isn’t so bad.

When the phone is available next week, it will come with a 3-year contract as a bonus when you buy a 20$ a month add-on pack on top of any voice plan you want. Under the typical Vision plans you can get Video Streaming, Audio Streaming and a slew of other Vision features. The executives I spoke to weren’t terribly clear about how the plan would stack, but this is what I was able to gather.

1. Pick any voice plan
2. Add on a 20$ a month pack that includes
   • Unlimited Email (restricted to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc,. no POP)
   • 2500 SMS Messages
   • “A couple hundred MMSs”
   • Unlimited Web Browsing
   • Free 3-year contract
3. If you want to use GPS, you can either pay for Rogers Telenav product or you can use Nokia Maps, but data is pay-per-use for the non-Rogers application. The executive I spoke to quoted that the pay-per-use data would be at 1.5c/kb.
4. On a 3-year contract, most of the Vision features get included.
5. If you don’t want the 20$ addon pack mentioned above, you can just get the 7$/month unlimited web-browsing addon.
6. The phone will be priced at $399 on a 3-year contract

So, it didn’t happen. I didn’t get my revolution in pricing. They didn’t say “60$ a month for 1000 minutes and unlimited data usage on the device”, instead I was left more confused than ever. This application is pay-per-use, but this one is a flat fee. Application X is free, but you pay for its Data. Unlimited Email is included, but you can only use specific providers.

The list goes on. You are all used to it, we all think it is normal. I, however, have been helping my mother shop for a phone the last few weeks, and I can tell you that most people still can’t navigate these options.

By simplifying plan pricing, Rogers, Bell or Telus could make it much easier for people to buy new devices and, most likely, start using more and more services. As it is, pricing is still very unclear and has not improved in years. I am not complaining about actual data rates here, I am complaining about the daunting pricing structures.

The question is: Has Rogers twisted Apple’s arm and will they offer similarily confusing options for the iPhone? Will the Canadian iPhone come with Exchange support, undercutting the lucrative corporate email market that Rogers, Telus and Bell all specifically protect (by limited what email accounts you can get email from on cheaper plans), and will all applications fall in a single, large (or unlimited) data bucket the way pricing has been set for the iPhone all over the world, or will billing be segmented by Application. Will rogers try to put iPhone users on to their Telenav product, and charge per-use for the iPhone’s built in maps application?

The answer should be an obvious “No”. Of course Apple will demand a similar pricing scheme for the iPhone in Canada as they have negotiated in other countries. I hope that is the case, but if so, it really seems odd that Nokia is getting such a bad deal, so close to the launch of the iPhone.

My guess is that this discombobulated pricing is the result of internal politics. The Vision plans seem to come from a different group than other applications and options, and I imagine the same could be said for Blackberry and other Smartphone plans. Consolidated and clearer pricing may require not just a new vision for Rogers, but serious organzational changes.

As widely reported everywhere Ted has announced he finally got the iPhone. Rogers reports their Q1 earnings today, some notable points, ARPU (average revenue per user) is up almost $5 to a wallet crushing $72 thanks in part to a growth in Data ARPU (now 14% of revenues) and as Rogers seems to have lost some low end share to growing competition to the likes of Telus’ Koodo and other discount brands. (we hear koodo is doing well, despite the branding)

Meanwhile, further rumours have the Nokia N95 (and other n series?) coming to rogers as well. Certainly Rogers will price the hell out of the high-end Nokias but notice these two announcements would Rogers is finally (and smartly) dropping the hammer on their GSM advantage on Telus and Bell. Those two share a network based on the increasingly-orphaned CDMA standard not supported by nokia or apple.

The coming of May means an important tradition, the coming of the Spring quarter and new mobile pricing and marketing plans from all the big carriers. What shall it be this time?

Just off the phone with a CSR at Rogers for one who informed your editor of this little tidbit: the reason Roger’s roaming charges on data are so high (not unheard of for folks to run up 800-1000 blackberry bills on a few business trips to the US) is because Rogers has never had a roaming plan for data. There’s a thought. But, says the CSR as well as sources from other carriers, starting next week expect some new new rate plans across the board as each carrier launches their spring campaigns and Rogers clears the deck for iPhone.

Expect the iPhone in June or so. Expect it to be the second gen iPhone with 3G and a few other tweaks to the current model.

Thank goodness for decent blackberry plans on Telus and new GSM entrants on the horizon, elsewise your future is looking awfully Rogery and you might as well sign over all your future paychecks to Ted right now just to get it over with.

Take it for what it’s worth (and remember that RIM products go by more names than Apple’s iPhone) but it’s interesting to look at google trends in general as prediction markets of public interest.

Note too, the cultural and language differences. An established market, querty keyboards, and enterprise-friendly features make “blackberry” very much a North American and english-language darling.

But, for style or status concious euro-cats and developing world googlers, it’s iPhone mania all the way. According to one survey, awareness of the iPhone is as high as 68% in China.

It’s amazing to see the power of iPhone fever. And it’s a version 1.0 product. In order to protect the innocent it’s probably best I didn’t plot “windows mobile” on this chart. You could always try that for yourself.

It takes a lot of work to negotiate a deal in each market. They’ve managed 4 of them so far. Canada is only the world’s 14th largest mobile market. If you were Steve Jobs who’s phone call would you be taking next?

Macworld has just wrapped up. Sadly for Canadian wireless enthusiasts there’s little report. No iPhones for Canada. The “Macbook Air” was announced but what’s so “air” about it is a mystery. Unlike ultraportables from competitors, the slender device features no mobile broadband connectivity. So no EVDO, no HSDPA. It’s got 802.11n but you’re tethered to within 100ft of an access point.

And with no card slot and only 1 (one) USB port, one hopes that you wouldn’t want to try and use an external WLAN dongle and, for example, a memory key at the same time.

Ah well, there’s always next year.