Spat with Rogers leaves Canadian Apple stores without iPhones - Page 4

It's a paperclip neutered of its original function!



Yes, because it's digital, then that means there was hardly any work put into it to make it in the first place, and even if there was, trying to recoup that investment is just wrong if the incremental cost is tiny.



Just a hint, reliable cell towers are a lot more expensive to build and maintain than your WiFi network. Your network goes down, you can fix it at your leisure. A cell tower goes down, you have thousands of customers upset and without service, and repair must be done in a very timely manner.


Friday isn't a deadline. No one has to buy the iPhone on Friday. Personally, I'm waiting for someone I know to get one so I can see how good of a signal it can get in my workshop. That may be a couple weeks.

New players? Evidence?

When will the people living in the premier capitalistic countries learn that this is just the beginning of class warfare. Those who can afford it think nothing of the high prices and those who cannot afford it sign petitions. However, petitions make little difference because the richer you are, you'll will undercut the petitions of the poorer person to maintain the your status quo. The upper classes write the rules. They make the laws. Ask yourself why in a federal system, subsidized by tax dollars, like phone service, business accounts get discounted and have no announced limits? Those who can afford it get discounts and those who cannot afford it pay for the network R&D and infrastructure.

Ok so to clear the confusion, I posted Roger's smartphone data rates that I had found on their website only a few weeks ago believing they had been changed since the iPhone 3G plans had come out. Apparently, I was wrong. I just visited Roger's website again and if go to rogers.com and follow: wireless -> plans -> "Mobile internet plans" you get the SAME rates as before!

here's the link: http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wi...e_mobile#start

I'm totally baffled, because I've read it three times to make sure I'm not mistaken! It appears the data rates for smartphones such as the Blackberry models and Windows mobile devices are outrageous! Somehow the iPhone 3G is an exception?? This is very strange!

I edited their webpage in photoshop to highlight the significant parts:



So the Standard rate for Smartphone customers with Data plan is:
"Up to 5MB = $15/MB
5MB > 10MB = $10/MB
10MB > 20MB = $5/MB
more than 20MB = $0.50/MB thereafter"

So, adding it up from the above scale, this is what is costs PER MONTH for data usage on a non-iPhone "smartphone" like a Blackberry or Windows Mobile device:

5MB per month, $75/month
10MB per month, $125/month
20MB per month, $175/month
100MB per month, $215/month
1000MB per month, $665/month


What am I missing here? These CAN'T POSSIBLY BE CORRECT! But I can't find a different "smartphone" rate table! If this is true, why hasn't anyone reported on this??? How do people use smartphones with Rogers?
Does anyone here know 1st person?

Yeah, but what is truly the most frustrating thing here is the way Rogers just don't seem to 'get it'. How could they blow an opportunity like this. Look at what happened to O2 in the UK. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...age_ahead.html O2 needs to take steps to stem the flow! Can you imagine a meeting between the Rogers executives and Steve Jobs where Rogers outlined their strategy? SJ would have sent them packing within minutes. Apple (SJ) is all about maximizing profits and selling large amounts of units but even more important to them (SJ), I am sure, is 'doing it right'. (read this to get an idea of how SJ thinks http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html) How could they fail so miserably in reading the market and understanding what they had to do to maximize both profits and the onslaught of new subscribers?

And now Telus and Bell are about to start charging us each time we receive a text message. WHAT? I hear the world scream...but that's back to front! I choose to text you and you have to pay? I am a Canadian but I am embarrassed by this debacle. How can we get it so wrong. Please everybody Canadian, make a noise.

That's why it is so funny when Rogers now say you don't have to use the iPhone plans, you can opt to use their existing data plans, which are even worse. Rogers is right when they say that the iPhone packages are the best value they offer for data. Ignoring that these are still far to highly priced, they are right.

In the end, it doesn't matter. They could post whatever information and rationale for their prines they want and some people would believe them..in fact they would actually be daft enough to quote from them to explain why the prices are high.

I don't know what they are complaining about!!!
In the UK our cheapest plan is $60/£30 per month for 75 minutes and 125 texts, rising to $147/£75 for 3000 miutes and 500 texts.
The basic iPhone costs $200/£99 and the 16GB costs $320/£159.

With O2 having exclusive rights to iPhone the situation is very similar to Canada, the service provider can choose whatever price they want.

Plus O2 has one of the poorest network coverage where I live and the nearest O2 3G signal is 60 miles away, while Vodaphone and Orange provide 3G coverage only 30 miles away!!! And with the price of gas hitting $9 a gallon that is too far to travel!!

Still, I can't wait to get my iPhone!! LOL

If this is true with Rogers, I hope Apple tells AT&T to adjust their prices because it's also a bit high, although not robbery like Rogers.

We built an iphone plan advisor www.billshrink.com
http://gizmodo.com/5023036/billshrin...iphone-3g-plan

Let us know what you think.

You are taking the piss, right?

O2 monthly charge of second highest plan = 90 CAD (includes all the extras below)
Rogers monthly charge of second highest plan = 100 CAD + system access (made up) fee= $6.95, emergency 911 = $0.5, "caller display" and "who called" = $15
O2 cost of 8gb phone= free
Rogers cost of 8gb phone = 199
O2 minutes = 1200
Rogers minutes = 600 + after 9pm unlimited
O2 texts = 500
Rogers texts = 200
O2 data and wifi = unlimited / unlimited
Rogers data & wifi = 1gb / unlimited
O2 contract length = 18months
Rogers contract length = 36months
O2 Bonus = reduced roaming charges
Rogers bonus = unlimited local calling for first 3 months

The average wage is also much higher in the UK so I think the difference is even bigger if you use the BigMac Index

rogers data plans suck but the biggest issue for me would be the 3 year slave contract.
contracts shouldn't be more than 12-18months

what? ok so let's pretend you can get an unlocked unit from Apple. So what? YOU STILL NEED AIRTIME FROM A CARRIER. There's NOTHING stopping the carriers from imposing a high rate and/or contract for a SIM that works on their networks. Sure, you get choice of carrier, but that doesn't necessarily mean you get a better rate.

- re: the article. TUAW had an article that said there are are other countries where you can only get the phone at the carrier locations, not Apple Stores.

"Update 2: Looks like this is just a tempest in a teapot. After looking at the iPhone pages for countries where Apple has retails stores (UK, Japan, Italy, and Australia) it looks like you won't be able to buy an iPhone in any non-US Apple Stores. Everyone can stop freaking out now."

Are you considering browser caching? Page sizes go way down if you consider how much information gets cached after visiting the first page of a given site. You would be surprised on how large stylesheet and script files can get, but they are almost always re-used for subsequent pages on the same site with little or no additional need to access the network. Overall network footprint can easily go down to 1/2 - 1/4 of the actual combined sizes of all the files used by a particular page. While I think Rogers 130KB/page average is low, it's not as far off as people say it is when you consider what actually goes over the network. That's not to say I don't think that the plan is way expensive, just be careful about how you do your network usage estimation.

With regards to why data rates are so expensive for other smart phones, it's largely due to the fact that the web browsing capabilities that all other smart phones use involves using the WAP/WML protocols or something related. WML is similar to HTML markup, but is completely devoid of basically any style or script information and has just bare bones markup. Pages are generally in the 5KB range. As such, 30MB of data in that environment is actually a lot, and so the carriers charge a proportional amount to what is actually used. They are not really charging for the amount of bandwidth you are consuming, they are charging more for how much you actually make use of the features that use the network. Now that the iPhone has much higher data consumption, they reduce the rates to what the market will bear.

I love how the rumor press likes to spin this decision as a drama or as "punishment". It makes zero business sense for Apple to do anything of the sort. Selling iPhones is all it cares about. It's complete bullshit to think they would limit potential sales temporarily as a negotiating tactic.

Let's look where you can by an iPhone at an Apple Store:

In the UK? Nope -- Carphone Warehouse or O2 Store only.
In Japan? Nope -- Softbank Store only.
In Italy? Nope -- Vodaphone or TIM stores only.
In Australia? Nope -- Telstra, Optus, or Vodaphone stores only.

Oh wait -- that's all of the other countries where Apple Stores exist! Every single other country, you have to buy the phone in -- gasp -- a carrier's phone store!

There's one reasonable explanation for this: Rogers (and every other mobile company) can't get their activation & provisioning system working on Apple's In-Store terminals in time for launch, whereas AT&T has a much closer relationship with Apple and has gone the extra mile.

The more reasonable explanation is the simple fact that there aren't many Apple stores in those other countries (Canada 6, UK 15, Japan 7, Italy 1, Australia 1 ) but literally hundreds of Rogers locations in Canada for example. It really makes no sense to go through the hassle to set it up, train etc... for so few locations not to mention those countries with multiple carriers....

The UK stores *may* have a very good relationship with O2, we don't know yet if they have in-store activation, credit checks, etc.

You are absolutely right here. It will depend on how many different websites someone actually visits. I know with my RSS reader I'm all over the map, while others may read all of the nytimes.com articles. But yeah, in either case the data transfer will be reduced. And to think I'm a web application developer! I'm not usually this incompetent



Have to disagree with you here. We are talking about "Smartphones" running Windows Mobile, Blackberry's OS, PalmOS, or Symbian --- not regular javaME phones. All modern smartphones come standard with full HTML browsers that access normal HTML content, not WAP/WML pages.

Bell and Telus Canada just announced that you will be charge 15¢ for incoming text messages on you cell phone.

Like AT&T, text messages goes against your account whether or not you pick them up.

Thank you. Your explanation seems to support what the Rogers' rep said.

It is amazing that nobody has reported what their current iPhone data usage has been. Obviously, there aren't many, if any, here that have an iPhone in the first place, yet will continually dis it. Wonder how many have a cell phone period.

I read somewhere (sorry can't remember) that mobile Safari doesn't cache because of memory and space limitations.

But even if it did, as has been pointed out, once you start using email with attachments, online games, streaming video, IM, etc., you can use up data really quick. And you *know* there's going to be bittorrent apps available right?

And you know this how? Other people in the UK have said they were told the Apple Store would be selling it. A poster on page 3 of this thread call a store in the UK and they did not say they are not carrying it, only that they were not sure. So, you have made a claim, can you back it up?

And do you find this acceptable?

You have asked this repeatedly in the various iPhone in Canada threads. There are nowhere near as many iPhone users in Canada as in the US, and you might expect a higher than normal proportion of the readers of these threads to be Canadian. It isn't a stretch to expect there would not be many/any Canadian readers here with an iPhone and those that might exist have probably never gone over their data cap (or even close) because the were careful not to. If they did, they would probably be too busy to post as they were busy working the 3rd job to pay off the 2nd mortgage.

To add you what Tulkas just stated you seem to want to ignore the fact that the new iPhone will be using 3G. You simply cannot use old usage totals on 2G as a benchmark. Plus the whole iPhone experience is improving with the launch with services such as MobileMe etc... which will lead to further data usage increases. Then you have the Apps...

Even the threads you posted yesterday about 2G usage (if you actually read them) had people stating they expected their usage to jump significantly with the new iPhone 3G.

Assuming you get any control over caching. I too have heard there isn't much by the way of caching in iPhone so far.


Does the iPhone offer a way to extract monthly data use data?

Definitely agree. Even here in the US, there's no real reason to lock people into ATT. WHY not have some competition?

I guess you don't read.

I have asked this question to anybody that has an iPhone. Not only here, but on other sites as well.

So has the posters of some of the links I listed. In every case where there was response, the amount of data usage supported AT&T's findings, i.e., less than 100MB per month

So far nobody has answered. Are you telling me that nobody reading AI has an iPhone? Particularly Canadians? Or that everybody reading posts in Canadian thread are only Canadian?

Yes! Very easy. And I believe Steve pointed this feature out in the iPhone keynote.

Here are the step-by-step instructions to Monitoring Usage, which is built right in the iPhone.

http://safari.ibmpressbooks.com/9780...7/ch11lev1sec3

It guess is might be possible, likely even, that I haven't read your posts on other sites. Let me check my ESP hat to see if I can find them.


I would suggest that there is a higher interest in these iPhone in Canada thread by Canadians than Americans, yes.

What you have constantly failed to realize is that every single person that has mentioned any iPhone data usage is not using an iPhone 3G AND THE USAGE IS EXPECTED TO BE HIGHER WITH 3G!!! You seem incapable of seeing this. You bring up quotes and stats from Rogers and other cell carriers and 'industry insiders" to back up Rogers claims. That is honestly as stupid as going to the tobacco companies for stats on cancer rates and causes. But, you keep using them and trying to defend them. Brilliant.

If you think the rates and packages are fair and reasonable, by all means, get in line a buy one on Friday. I would love to see your data usage numbers after a month, as well as your bills. I think that would be foolish, but then I might have higher standards of what I expect from companies that provide services to me. Perhaps your 3G data usage won't be high. Sign up for the base package then. Enjoy having to keep track of your usage throughout the day, every day. Enjoy the limited minutes. Enjoy the brief free nights. Enjoy counting your messages. I am sure all of these will make your iPhone experience an excellent one. They would not for me.

With all the talk by Canadian cell phone companies to justify their gouging (Any of Rogers packages, Bell and Telus charging for incoming messages, nights starting at 9PM, etc) some seem willing to accept their arguments that they need to do this because of increased costs. Yet, Canadian cell companies enjoy close to the highest profits anywhere in the world. When one raise rates the others do. When one adds new fees, the others do. When one removes services from basic packages, the others do. That is not a sign of a competitive market. That is a sign of collusion. But, still, some appear more than wiling to believe anything these companies releases as justification.

The iPhone is able to access the World Wide Web via a modified version of the Safari web browser, which as the article below describes the difference in how it caches.
http://yuiblog.com/blog/2008/02/06/iphone-cacheability/

And what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Apple would still be realizing the full revenue it had expected from having sold an iPhone.


Again, Apple is getting exactly the same amount of money per phone no matter how the phone is sold. Why not sell it directly to customers?

As for Rogers... Well, at the end of the day, you're going to be giving Rogers money no matter what because in Canada because they're the only company with a compatible network.

If Rogers has customers who are already on existing Rogers contracts (or pay as you go plans), they're getting their ongoing revenue stream anyway, no matter what phone their customers bring to the network, where the phones were purchased, or under what terms.

Okay, so if I understand the article correctly, if a website is specifically optimized for mobile users, there might be some effective caching, otherwise not so much. Any big html pages or images will likely not be cached.

Whoa, according to this, Fido is going to offer a $30 data plan with 6 gigs:

http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+R...g/3806524.html

That's not unlimited, but it might be good enough. This is a big move! I need to check the fine print, as this may indeed be enough to hook me!

Well, if this is accurate, I think I'll get the Fido $20/200 minutes plan, with the system access fee and $30 data, I'll be just under $60. That's good enough. I *really* hope that above report is accurate!

Obviously you haven't read my posts. I in fact have stated 3G is going to increase data usage under real conditions, but how much I don't know and as the Rogers rep readily admitted as well. All I can tell you is that AT&T didn't project the increase in usage to be anywhere near their original projections, that they expect an increase because of 3G, that Rogers and other international carriers have determined their prices based on the only historical data available, i.e., AT&T's and their own Data Usage reports, that as Rogers has done, set the initial goal of 400MB as their baseline. And equally important Rogers, AT&T, etc., own in-house research testing the iPhone 3g in their own labs.

So, let's put this to bed.

My business is consulting, developing and managing massive data for research purposes. I have as previously posted listed links to every article that I could find that would or would not support AT&T's claims that the average Data Usage by its iPhone users was less than 100MB.

So far, nobody has given any evidence to the contrary. All I hear is, Rogers, AT&T, etc., are lying.

Listen and listen carefully. Get off you ass and show me the proof. Perhaps you can do something that nobody else can.

Only in part. Any caching will be effective no matter how small.

It does appear that the Safari Web Browser is optimized for the iPhone. As the article referenced, as well as those on the ADC site, more can be done. That and the fact that Wi-Fi, Edge and 3G are accessed in that order to surf. Obviously, since Wi-Fi has not cost to the user, Apples iPhone strategy to 'default' internet connections in that order keep data use charges down is a beauty to behold. I am not aware that anybody else came up with that one.

I guess you haven't read my posts. In particular I was pissed off with my son who text messages his buddies. Most live around the corner.

I for one, don't use text messaging. And never, plan to. I have friends in the US who would text message to friends every day. Not realizing that many of their friends were being charge ¢20 each message because they didn't have it in plan.

And as David Pogue says, "One coming program, called iCall, will give you free phone calls when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot." I can't either. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/te...=1&oref=slogin

I am hoping to do the same with Skype, which let me call the UK last night to find that their stores weren't selling the iPhone either.

Nice idea but the Fido site begs to differ. Maybe this is a face saving plan to be introduced. Maybe Rogers, realizing the extent to which it has screwed up are now moving the iPhone emphasis to Fido.

Currently however, the Fido Plan sucks big time

for 60$ per month + Made Up Access fee 6.95 + 911 fee $0.5, you get
150 daytime minutes (unlimited after 7pm)
75 texts
400mb data

For an additional $15 per month you get caller display and 2500 txts
For an additional $20 per month you get 10 000 texts
For an additional $30- you get another 300mb data and for an additional $100 you get 6gb!

So a minimum package with caller id and increased data you'll pay $112.- + tax
OUCH!

Actually, they do. Especially in countries where you have more then one GSM carriers. Let's take a look at French Orange Telecom iPhone offer, since Rogers seems to think that there offer is better (http://forums.appleinsider.com/regis...754&i=21967115, if you can read french). The French have 3 GSM operators : Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, What sets Orange offer apart from Rogers is the amount of choices. They have 5 iPhone plan offer ranging from 49 Euro to 149 Euro a month, all have unlimited Internet, emails and Visual voice mail. And a choice between 1 or 2 years contract, Orange also have a Business iPhone plans (I can't say if it's good or not since I don't know to what to compare it). The phone rates doesn't seems very good since they offer unlimited weekend and evening calls.
Rogers says they have better plans then Orange, I think it's debatable. And take the time to convert Euro to Canadian dollar. I think Roger didn't do that.

Proof, as much as it can be presented for speculative data usage for an unavailable device, has been provided to you through stats that show the average web page is far larger than what Rogers stats. It has been presented to you through individuals doing informal analysis of their own data usage. You reject these and accept only what comes from the carriers. Your source is suspect.

Nope, looks like the new data plan is official, both from Fido and Rogers:

http://www.electronista.com/articles...6gb.iphone.3g/

Doesn't include visual voice-mail, but I don't need it. I don't need SMS either, since I'll have IM!