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You may have heard of this one already, but Rogers is limited time offering of a $30 data plan for 6GB of usage. That’s a lot of usage. That’s 18 times more data than a comparable $30 for 300MB with Rogers offers on the blackberry. And even at high speeds, you’re going to need to do a lot of streaming, or torrenting or something, to hit a 6GB cap on a mobile device. Remember this is the plan that came of all the outcry created all over the press, the internets, and here too, over Rogers steep rates for the iPhone 3G. The 30/6GB plan is the one limited time only concession to the haters and pent-up frustrated Rogers customers out there.

There’s more than a few catches. But here’s why the catches don’t really matter:

Catch 1: it’s only on a three year plan. But the good news, the cancellation penalty for data plans is only $100 anytime in the next 3 years.

Catch 2: the plan goes away August 31st. We’re going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that Rogers is not going to come out with an even better offer the day after. More like the opposite.

Catch 3: You can’t even get an iPhone 3G or Blackberry Bold or other next gen 3G device yet to make it worth while. Ya, but you could get one later and hold on to the 30/60GB plan when you do. Ideally, you could go through all sorts of devices in the next 3 years but hang on to the 30/6GB plan if it’s still the best out there.

Catch 4: More competition is coming in just a year and they may have great offers too. Or they may not. 30/6GB is pretty cheap for data and after paying off industry Canada, your new entrants may or may not be able to beat it. And then cancellation only costs $100 and you can still say bye bye Rogers.

Last catch: the charge is not $100 if you are also canceling a voice plan or other contract at the same time. In that case, according to the fine print, you could be on the hook for a standard $400 contract penalty PLUS the $100 data plan cancellation charge. Ouch. So if you might want to get out of it, this offer is best if NOT switching to Rogers for the first time and/or signing up for a whole new phone with it. Question your CSR carefully about that one.

The plan doesn’t work for data cards (too bad) but it is good for any smartphone including current/future blackberries if you have a personal blackberry as opposed to enterprise (gotta keep milking those enterprise clients). We’re unclear on thethering with this plan, that would be wonderful to get away with, but we’d say don’t necessarily get your hopes up.

Anyway if you are an existing Rogers Customer, or not otherwise signing up for a new 3 year voice contract, you might want to jump on this. This little plan could be like the next mythic legendary grandfathered $20 fido unlimited offer that a select few locked in to and hung on for years.

Recommended.

We should all protest Rogers more often…

Apple insider [link: Spat with Rogers leaves Canadian Apple stores without iPhones] has lent some credence to the rumours zinging around the internet everywhere yesterday about Apple censuring Rogers over their iPhone plans. The whole thing sounds rather odd.

Did Apple not know about the Rogers contracts before they were announced? Was it actually news that Canada has the longest contracts and some of the highest mobile pricing in the developed world (developing world, other worlds, the mars rover probably has a better data and minutes plan than you do etc.)? With an exclusive on the phone and new competition on horizon, are we really surprised that Rogers is trying to milk the opportunity to the maximum.

There is a possibility that Apple was taken aback by the unexpectedly harsh publicity. From a lofty distance it is easy to underestimate the passionate pent up frustrations of long-beleaguered Canadian mobile consumers. It surprises us all the time.

Do you think the petition really worked? On the other hand, we feel like there is something else going on here. Apple has never really been known for championing “low pricing for the everyman”. Apple has always expected you to pay a premium to enjoy the privilege of using their goods.

The simpler explanation would be that production of the new device has yet to ramp up and that shortages may be expected globally while Apple’s contract manufacturers struggle to keep up with the initial flush of demand. Do you believe this is really a spat between Apple and Rogers? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in. It’s worth mentioning that a few (by few we mean 20,000 and counting) densizens have gathered to express their opinions on Rogers’ new iPhone pricing. They don’t like it. And this story has legs, having been picked up by fortune/CNN 15,000 Canadians petition for iPhone rate relief and the globe’s report on business. RuinedIphone is taking the noble if possibly quixotic approach of hoping for lower tariff by asking Steve and Ted nicely. The petition site is also somewhere between a blend of savvy populist rabble rousing and a clever way to reap donation money. We wish we’d thought of it.

Note that wirelessnorth.ca always welcomes your unsolicited EMT and paypal donations to editor@wirelessnorth.ca.

related post and discussion thread: Rogers iPhone pricing released (for real this time)

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.

New blackberry pricing from Rogers is now official. The key difference is a new flex plan of $50 for $500 that scales to $100 for 6GB as well as a little better deal than before on a $30 for 300MB. Rogers is making room for the 3G blackberries due out later this summer. Here’s the details from the Rogers site:

Compared with the iPhone plan, $30 for for 300MB doesn’t sound quite as nice as $30 for “unlimited” access. On the other hand 3 year contracts are not a requirement for the new bberry plans.

The flex plans and the higher caps on these Rogers will go a ways to helping consumers keep their bill, if not much lower, at least predictable. Unpredictable and often punitive pricing on data has been one of the major barriers to adoption of data and mobile applications in Canada.

However, you need to add these data plans to a blackberry voice plan, plus system access fee, plus “extras” like voicemail and caller ID. Don’t think that these rates will save you from your roaming bill:

“Standard roaming rate is billed at 5¢ per KB [$52,000 /GB] in both the United States and other countries. Customers with a BlackBerry Plan will be billed at only 1¢ per KB [$10,400/GB] while roaming in the USA, Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands.”

As far as we know, pricing is still pretty ugly on roaming minutes and SMS txts rates. (Did you know that roaming txts are $0.95 a pop when roaming in the US? and that rogers will actually charge you long distance charges on incoming calls?).

Thanks to Colin for being the fist to tip us off to the details (back on Friday already).

We’re now watching to see how Bell and Telus respond. (and Quebecor, Globalive, Data AV, Shaw…)

As being rapidly splashed across the internets, pricing for the Rogers iPhone have been revealed. There is some good news. It seems that the dictats of Steve have influenced global pricing on the iPhone as the Rogers plan closely matches that of AT&T.

The iPhone will cost you a data plan of $30 a month for “unlimited” (email, web) [ed - what about 3rd party apps?] or $45 a month for the enterprise email version. This is on top of a regular Rogers voice plan, system access fee etc. Basically this gibes with recent comments by Rogers President and COO Nadir Mohamed (and our own predictions) that the iPhone will cost the average customer about $90 a month. That’s not super cheap but it’s reasonable compared to the price of any blackberry plan.

As previously reported the iPhone will cost $199 up front (currency parity!) for the 8 GB version and $299 for the 16GB and extra color option(white). There’s also option for existing Rogers contract customers to upgrade to the iPhone. That’s the good news.

The bad news. Astonishingly, Rogers is only offering the phone on a 3-year contract. That’s 50% longer than AT&T (and anywhere else in the world) and twice as long as the 18 month contracts offered by O2 in the UK. For some reason, 3year contracts are legal in this country.

$199 + 36months x $90 = $3440 and that’s if you buy the cheap one. Don’t forget the GST/PST.

However, you’ll probably realize you are likely to spend at least that much on cellphone service in the next three years, no matter what your plan.

There’s no doubt the exclusive iPhone 3G is a coup for Rogers, and we can be sure they’ll be taking share from Bell and Telus not to mention locking-in a lot of Canadians just before more new competition arrives. Bell and Telus cannot offer the iPhone because their networks are not GSM. As far as we can tell the current iPhone 3G also does not support the AWS bands currently being auctioned in Canada. So the new entrants won’t get it either. That’s not to say though that future iPhone versions, and many other compelling handsets, won’t be hitting the AWS bands at least in the next 3 years.

There’s actually a whole bunch of really neat devices on a whole bunch of platforms already coming out in the next 3 to 9 months. But that’s a story for another post…

Chris Sorensen at The Star has the story that Rogers will be revamping their data pricing in time for the iPhone.

Mohamed said that wireless data pricing will “evolve” as Rogers subscribers begin using their phones for more than making voice calls – a trend expected to gain traction once Apple Inc.’s iPhone is made available to Canadians through Rogers on July 11….

“You will see more value in our pricing as we go forward,” Mohamed said today at a telecom conference in Toronto.

Rogers and other Canadian wireless operators have been criticized for charging subscribers some of the highest data rates in the developed world.

At WirelessNorth.ca we’re cautiously optimistic that Rogers is finally be at the cusp of embracing 21st century mobile trends. Rogers insiders have been whispering for a while that data pricing would be coming down when the time was right. Nonetheless we await to hear what exactly means “evolved” and “value”.

And then, in other news from “the more things change” department, the Star also reports that “While Rogers has yet to reveal how much it will cost Canadians to own an iPhone, executives have said they are not fans of unlimited plans such as those offered with the iPhone in the U.S. by AT&T Inc.”

We also know already that Rogers is also not a big fan of AT&T’s idea of “only” a 2-year contract either.

It’s time to take out that second mortgage, the Rogers iPhone is finally landing. Coinciding with Apples World Wide Developers conference on June 9th, Steve Jobs will be announcing the launch of the next generation iPhone. As well as a host of other new countries, Rogers will be exclusively launching the phone Canada. Here’s a rumour roundup of everything Apple might announce on Monday. Hilariously the predictions are all over the map as to exactly what the phone will look like thicker, thinner, one new iphone or many etc.

Earlier on WirelessNorth.ca, here’s our predictions of what the Rogers iPhone: Rogers iPhone Predictions

Expect Rogers to make as much fuss about this launch. As the only (current) GSM provider, it’s a major coup for them and big opportunity to rope in as many more Canadians as they can to 3 year contracts before Canada’s new competing carriers are able to get a network up and running.

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.

• 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)