Wirelessnorth.ca

Word from the ever vigilant Alec Saunders this week that data pricing at Rogers has actually gotten worse. The news, if you really want to here it, is that Rogers $65 1GB plan is no more, replaced by only a rather expensive $100/1GB option. Roger’s ‘vision’ $7 plan with all it’s caveats is now also only applicable to 3 year contracts – regardless if Rogers subsidized your phone or if you paid full price for an unlocked GSM phone on your own.

At Wirelessnorth.ca we’re somewhat in shock that data rates could actually trend upwards. There was a quote, one of the favourites from the recent eComm conference in silicon valley “Violating Moore’s law… ought to be a criminal offence”.

And meanwhile it’s another season and Rogers still has no roaming plans for data either. That’s 5 cents a kilobyte should you accidentally step a foot across the US border. And with wonderful HSDPA “vision” devices capable of 250kBytes/sec or more that’s an amazing $750/min in case anyone is counting.

Data pricing, especially over GSM, continues to be a travesty in Canada.

This new spectrum auction can’t end soon enough.

Link: Rogers “Vision” sucks on Saunderslog.

Rogers, Canada’s only GSM provider has recently provided some new clarity around their famous $7 unlimited “on device” browsing plan. The plan gives you unlimited use of the Rogers-branded browser on certain devices (not blackberries, not pdas, not data cards) for 7 bucks a month.

Without a data plan, Rogers charges 5cents kilobyte, $50 bucks a megabyte, $50,000 or an entry level BMW per gigabyte of usage.

The funny thing about Rogers new HDSPA network is that it’s pretty awesome. We know you can get speeds up to 250kb per second using a 3.6MBs device (or a GB in about 70 minutes). With a newer
7.2MBs phone would be notionaly up to double that, or least better than a Gig per hour at top speed. You wonder if the engineers forgot to mention to the pricing folks how many wildly more kilobytes you can push through the air than

One way to look at this plan is that $7 a month is one heck of a discount on $50,000 dollars an hour. The other way to look at this is the other way around.

Being so cheap, the deal makes some sense as deal as basic mobile websurfing as it’s an application (like $15 a month unlimited email) that doesn’t tend to have high bandwidth requirements to begin with. There’s also the advantage of forcing all mobile surfers to start of at the rogers portal/deck welcome page – and all the co-marketing monetization opportunities that come along with that.

It’s really any mobile app other than browsing or email that would have high bandwidth.

Here’s what Rogers has to say about that:

How could I incur additional data charges outside of the Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan?

You may be incurring additional data transfer charges if:

1. If you have downloaded an application to your handset that is not Rogers Certified, see rogers.com/mobileinternet for a list of eligible applications and websites.
   OR
2. On the Nokia N95 8GB, when you launch the Nokia mobile Internet browser and do not see the Rogers homepage, you are accessing the mobile Internet outside of the Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan.
   OR
3. Tethering: When you use your phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet. The phone can be connected via USB cable or infrared Bluetooth.

Pay-per-use data rates for in-eligible usage with the Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan:

Up to 5MB 	$15/MB
5MB to 10 MB 	$10/MB
10MB to 20MB 	$5/MB
20MB or more 	$0.50/MB

Here’s what that translates to on your bill at speeds of (only) 250kb/s:

First 5MB 	$75	20 seconds
10 MB		$125	40 seconds
20 MB		$175	80 seconds
 1 GB		 $687	 70 minutes

What’s your thoughts, Can we still call this punitive pricing on data use? It’s pretty close. It’s clear that Rogers is gung ho about pricing by application and no so keen on this whole idea of “off deck” applications.

Next up on WirelessNorth.ca! Top 10 mobile applications least likely to be certified by your carrier for unlimited usage. Care to take any guesses?

p.s. Fortunately(?) there is another option, the not widely publisized but generaly avalable option to apply a $65 for one GB of any-type usage to your phone, and, sometimes (pick the right CSR) you can get the data card version with incremental GBs costing only $10 each (another heck of a discount from 50 thousand a gig) added on as well.

So there we are, can we put this topic to bed now? _{Just please don’t ask about roaming rates, blackberry rates, rates in different provinces…}

Sol Trujillo, CEO of Telstra, one of the largest service providers in Australia recently gave an interview on BusinessWeek, highlighting the success they have experienced with Data services, with 80% growth in data revenues! (not including SMS traffic, with 20% growth). So why should anyone in Canada be interested in an Australian network? For one reason, a number within the Rogers fold think there are many similarities between the two nations – geographic, economic and telecom fundamentals (?). So maybe there are a few lessons we need to learn and emulate to achieve similar success in data penetration and usage.

What is interesting to highlight are the reasons for the growth that Telstra has experienced:

• Infrastructure Investment in rolling out a technically superior network, with data rates reaching 14Mbps!
• Application: relevant and practical, that the consumer may actually be interested in. For instance, promoting data applications in outbacks where farmers can monitor their stock/land/crop through video riding off of the network. Given the large tracts of agricultural land with a small population, remote sensing and monitoring is a compelling application.
• Affordable rates : Is it a coincidence that the high data usage and growth being experienced are in some way stimulated by lower data rates? I would like to guess so. Compare the 5cents/Kb in Canada (Rogers) to the .025Cents/Kb offered by Telstra. And this includes “tethered” usage, currently charged at a premium by Rogers.
• Open Access : going beyind the walled-garden approach excercised by operators here to a free reign model. The motto being – give the customers the content they want and are looking for, rather then sandboxing them into content they dont. The success of the internet was not built on portals.

But the most important reasoning of all – believing that a strong business model for mobile data exists and taking the leap to provide consumer centric offerings. The right business model is certainly not an easy thing to build or come across, but it does exist as proven by Telstra. Maybe we need to send some of our folks down-under to do a study …..

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.

If there was any doubt that Canada is lagging in mobile, the industy’s own revenue statistics should make that clear. Despite much higher prices on Data, actual data ARPU (average revenue per user) has been far lower in Canada in recent years than other markets. In 2006, barely 10% of Canadian carrier ARPU was data. For context, this was a milestone acheived in the UK in 2001. Note also that a significant part of this ‘data’ revenue is SMS messaging.

Alec Saunders had a great post earlier this week on the subject Talking Turkey on Canadian Data.

“The answer, of course, is price elasticity. Because the cost of mobile data is so high, Canadians automatically use their data plans much more conservatively than folks in many other parts of the world. We don’t surf the mobile web, stream video, or upload photos from our mobile phones. “

Devices are also a problem. With the exception of blackberry, Canada has also long been a country of hand-me-down handsets from the rest of the world. Notheless, through whatever factors, not only are Canadians getting screwed, but even the carriers are missing out on opportunity.

How can we improve mobile usage in Canada? How can the carriers themselves make more money on data?

1. Better pricing. $35 is not a reasonable price for uploading a single picture to facebook (true story). Make the prices reasonable and the consumers will come in droves.

   Predictable pricing. Even more important than how much the pricing is, make it at leat predictable. Narrow-gardens where some apps are arbitrarily free and others run up your bill 30-50$/MB doesn’t cut it. Consumers are terified to click on apps or links on their phone because they have no idea what it will cost them.

2. Let consumers choose which apps they want to use, which content they want to view. Trust me, the carrier marketing department does not actually know which youTube vids and applications all the kids will want to see next week.
3. Be Open! foster, open and nourish access to both on and off-deck content. Open markets are great. Open markets pick the winning content automatically. Winning content drives usage. Usage drives revenues. This is how it works.
4. Sell better devices. Device makers, content platforms find other/direct ways to get better phones in the hands of consumers
5. Developers. Make better, more usable apps. Focus on a set of devices, create good experiences, share your tips with the community.
6. advertising / education to drive usage and awareness of what you can do with new mobile services, new devices.

And probably a few more too. What would you add?

Breathless romours are afoot on the mobile forums that Rogers may be substantially reducing surfing rates on certain devices. Feb 5th is the magic date that Big Red is expected to be dropping rates to as low as $5 to $7 for unlimited surfing on for on-device browsers.

What’s the catch? the plan may not be available on windows media, smart phones or blackberries (a.k.a any any device you might actually want to use unlimited browsing on).

This too after recently introducing a $15 unlimited email plan for the pearl.

All of which seeming to further this Canadian industry trend of per-device network pricing. A nice gesture, but but not quite the open device landscape of our wireless dreams? Check back Feb 5th to know for sure.

It was bound to happen. A cell phone user in Alberta, cleverly thought he’d use his $10 “unlimited” data plan for well, unlimited data usage. He tethered his phone to his computer and happily used the heck out of that connection only to be surprised by an $85,000 phone bill. I guess he should have read the fine print. “Offer not applicable if attaching your phone to a computer, Subject to “acceptable” use restrictions in Terms of Service, including but not limited to consuming “excessive” network capacity or causing our network to be adversely affected.”

Now the story of Piotr Staniaszek’s 85,000 dollar phone bill is gathering serious mainstream media attention. the most popular story of the day at the globeandmail.com.

cbc news: Cellphone user shocked by charges of $85K

Globe and Mail: Cellphone user rings up $85,000 bill

Bell’s spinners are valiantly attempting to unwind this PR gem. According to the news, they’ve offered to cut Piotr’s bill to ‘only’ $5,000 or so. But I have a feeling that with the fresh media attention, they may sweeten that offer further.

What does this mean for wirelessnorth subscribers? Careful how you use your data.

The best/only deal we are aware of for truly unlimited data in Canada are Telus’s connect plans: [details ]. (Though please send us a link if you are aware of other good deals)

Related link of the Day: “We’ve replaced John’s phone bill with…“