What exactly is the point you are trying to make? You have stated the population densities of 7 Canadian cities and 9 US cities but have not quantified nor explained anything. I have no idea if you agree with my assessment that we need to look at colonised areas or not.
To further complicate things, you state in an earlier post, "[Solipsism,] your estimates ignore the fact that Canada's cities are densely populated", but then in a later post you post highly populated US cities. I fail to see any bearing the varying population densities have on the argument as it stands.
I'm also confused by your post as I clearly made my case stating that only 4% of the entire Canadian landmass was arable while stating that 18% of the US was arable, which greatly favoured Canada in my equation to determine a closer—yet not exact, as previously stated—estimate of liveable land area that people could reside comfortably, thereby being a potential customer base for the associated carriers.
Besides the point that the Britannica population density of Canadian map from 2002 makes no sense for your argument unless you are asserting that Canadian cities are more densely populated than US cities (which wouldn't make sense), the US map below is not not from Britannica and has red splotches that only vaguely match up with the Canadian map above.
On top of that, there is no legend or explanation of any kind by you to discern the meaning of the red splotches. For all we know they represent the the sales of the original Nintendo Game Boy in North America, which is the only reasonable explanation to its inclusion in your post.
You keep mentioning arable land, as if that was at all related to the question at hand, that is Rogers network substantially more expensive to build and maintain, specifically because of the geography of Canada vs the geography of the US. I don't know much about cell tower construction, but I don't think they grow out of the ground, so what does arable land mass matter? You can throw lots of number around, but if they are not relevant, they don't make sense.
Simply put: Rogers only services urban areas. That is, Rogers only provides any usable coverage in cities and metros. So, icfireball's stats of pop densities of a few cities is actually relevant. Canada only has a very small number of urban centres, where most of our population lives. In fact, the list from icfireball is most of them. There are a few smaller centres, but again, not many. Contrast that with the US, where there are many more than listed. Rogers only had to build enough towers to cover 10-15 centres. For that, they probably have access to 80-90 percent of the Canadian population. How many cities did ATT have to provie coverage to? Still think it was more expensive, per use, or per sq km or any other metric?
What exactly is the point you are trying to make? You have stated the population densities of 7 Canadian cities and 9 US cities but have not quantified nor explained anything. I have no idea if you agree with my assessment that we need to look at colonised areas or not.
To further complicate things, you state in an earlier post, "[Solipsism,] your estimates ignore the fact that Canada's cities are densely populated", but then in a later post you post highly populated US cities. I fail to see any bearing the varying population densities have on the argument as it stands.
I'm also confused by your post as I clearly made my case stating that only 4% of the entire Canadian landmass was arable while stating that 18% of the US was arable, which greatly favoured Canada in my equation to determine a closer—yet not exact, as previously stated—estimate of liveable land area that people could reside comfortably, thereby being a potential customer base for the associated carriers.
Besides the point that the Britannica population density of Canadian map from 2002 makes no sense for your argument unless you are asserting that Canadian cities are more densely populated than US cities (which wouldn't make sense), the US map below is not not from Britannica and has red splotches that only vaguely match up with the Canadian map above.
On top of that, there is no legend or explanation of any kind by you to discern the meaning of the red splotches. For all we know they represent the the sales of the original Nintendo Game Boy in North America, which is the only reasonable explanation to its inclusion in your post.
You're numbers and estimations mean nothing when it comes to profitability.
The purpose of the first map was to demonstrate that within canada, most of the population is centered in a very small land mass and the rest of Canada, the majority of the land has an extremely low population density.
Now take a look at the second map (reproduced below). First, you'll note that this map is even more accurate than the first map because the densities are not boundaries. Next, you'll notice that the population of Canada is heavily centered in a very small area of land along the southern border of Canada. As your eyes wander south you should have noticed that the population centers in the US are more widely dispersed over a larger land mass than in Canada. What this means is that to maintain a reliable network in the U.S., since it's standard for operators to provide free roaming within the U.S., they most cover a greater area of land than in Canada. In Canada, the cell network can be heavily focused in regions of land. To clarify my point one last time, Rogers claims that "our network reaches 94% of the Canadian population." To reach 94% of the Canadian population requires a lot less cell network infrastructure than to reach 94% of the U.S. population.
For some unknown reason people want to compare Canada to the US in terms of the cell carriers. Then they want to say that Canada has a lot of uninhabited land so I found a metric that would remove all the land that that would probably be uninhabitable. By taking the arable land, which is land that crops will grow, therefore land that people could possibly reside we get a measure that better suits the argument that Canada's population is in a smaller area and giving a metric that is much, much closer than the "I know it's cheaper for x over y because I said so" comments and the pointless roseate maps. I was hoping to stimulate some factual posting that actually led to someone finding a better metric instead of more un-objective conjecture. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
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Simply put: Rogers only services urban areas.That is, Rogers only provides any usable coverage in cities and metros.
Are you saying that Rogers has no carriers in suburban areas or that Canada has no such sprawls?
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So, icfireball's stats of pop densities of a few cities is actually relevant. Canada only has a very small number of urban centres, where most of our population lives. In fact, the list from icfireball is most of them.
And NYC has twice the density of the most dense Canadian city, as per icfireball's post, so how does his posting of some Canadian cities negate the density of US cities?
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There are a few smaller centres, but again, not many. Contrast that with the US, where there are many more than listed.
Again, this metric is pointless as stated as the population of the US is 9x as large.
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Rogers only had to build enough towers to cover 10-15 centres. For that, they probably have access to 80-90 percent of the Canadian population. How many cities did ATT have to provie coverage to? Still think it was more expensive, per use, or per sq km or any other metric?
Rogers having to put up less towers does not make them cheaper per capita based on that measure along. Here are some simple things that you are not considering:
? The more towers bought the more likely the cost per tower lowers
? Which significantly more carriers in the US AT&T can rent out space, thus lowering the cost
? More competition in the US means lower prices as a general rule
? The US cell penetration rate is 84% compared to Canada's 58%
? AT&T has 10x the subscribers of Rogers
? The US has 13x the number of mobile customers than Canada
If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
You're numbers and estimations mean nothing when it comes to profitability.
I never said it did, I merely used a metric to remove all the unusual land from Canada to make the playing field more equal. If you have a metric that lowers the 4% figure even more then please post it.
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To reach 94% of the Canadian population requires a lot less cell network infrastructure than to reach 94% of the U.S. population.[/B]
Less towers would only mean it's cheaper per capita if everything else is the same. But it's not. Not by a long shot, yet I haven't read where you are considering that in any form.
I really feel sorry for our friends in Canada. Maybe that's why Apple did not reach an agreement with Rogers when they used the revenue sharing business model. I don't think it is directly related to population density, I think it is plain greed and monopoly. They know that they are the only GSM carrier and people have no choice but to use their network. Once another GSM carrier comes into play, we will see a huge drop in prices and improvement in service. I have personally seen this happen in many countries (one carrier ripping-off consumers, once another carrier comes into play prices and services improve more than anyone thought).
I never said it did, I merely used a metric to remove all the unusual land from Canada to make the playing field more equal. If you have a metric that lowers the 4% figure even more then please post it.
Less towers would only mean it's cheaper per capita if everything else is the same. But it's not. Not by a long shot, yet I haven't read where you are considering that in any form.
I wasn't arguing for the comprehensive profitability of wireless carriers in the U.S. versus Canada. I was, however, arguing against the assertion that Canada's geographic specifications made it less suited to wireless profitability, and I stand by that. In fact, I think Canada's geographical specifications make it better suited for wireless profitability when compared to that of the U.S.
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Originally Posted by solipsism
Rogers having to put up less towers does not make them cheaper per capita based on that measure along. Here are some simple things that you are not considering:
— The more towers bought the more likely the cost per tower lowers
— Which significantly more carriers in the US AT&T can rent out space, thus lowering the cost
— More competition in the US means lower prices as a general rule
— The US cell penetration rate is 84% compared to Canada's 58%
— AT&T has 10x the subscribers of Rogers
— The US has 13x the number of mobile customers than Canada
If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
As I've said before, the conclusion you reached regarding geographical suitability to profit in the wireless industry in Canada versus the United States is erroneous and therefore not a verifiable metric.
Now onto non geographical factors you mentioned:
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The more towers bought the more likely the cost per tower lowers
Cell phone towers are not like cans of soup. The cost will be roughly comparable no matter the volume. The does cost more, however, is to serve a geographically larger metro area. The United States has more metro areas and those metro areas are dispersed over a larger area of land. In addition, the United States has THE largest metro area in the world (New York to Pennsylvania).
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Which significantly more carriers in the US AT&T can rent out space, thus lowering the cost
Although true in principle, it is to the benefit of the cell carrier to maintain their own cell towers and network. Every time a cell users uses another networks cell tower to make calls, the cell carrier's network must pay the other network through the nose for the call. In addition, since most United States carriers have free roaming, whereas I've heard Canada doesn't, U.S. carriers would have to pick up the tab on roaming calls, costing them profit. And finally, also consider that the two major carriers in the U.S., AT&T and Verizon, unlike most countries in the world, use competing technologies (GSM and CDMA), and therefore can't use each others networks, so therefore must have their own or use a smaller company's cell towers.
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More competition in the US means lower prices as a general rule
Yes, but this would mean Canada has HIGHER profitability!
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The US cell penetration rate is 84% compared to Canada's 58%
Penetration rate is directly proportional to the supply and demand. If those statistics are true, perhaps less of the population in Canada doesn't have cell phones because it's cost prohibitive or the canadian wireless industry spends less on advertising.
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AT&T has 10x the subscribers of Rogers
The US has 13x the number of mobile customers than Canada
The United States also has 10 times the population of Canada.
Again, this is related to penetration rate and supply and demand. Profitability is based on profit per subscriber, not total number of subscribers or total profit.
Most of your arguments were not related to profitability. Consider this:
You said AT&T has 10 times the number of subscribers than Rogers.
The 2007 revenue of AT&T Mobility was $42.7 billion.
The 2007 revenue of Rogers wireless w as $4.01 billion.
This equates to $4.27 billion for AT&T compared with $4.01 billion for Rogers for the same number of customers. I think you'll find these very equal. I would have included statistics on profit, but I couldn't find them, and profit is not indicative of profitability. Consider that AT&T may spend more money on voluntary expenses like R&D or advertising expenses than Rogers.
"Rogers has been criticized for having unusually high data prices relative to their cost to provide service, especially with the launch of iPhone in Canada."
For some unknown reason people want to compare Canada to the US in terms of the cell carriers. Then they want to say that Canada has a lot of uninhabited land so I found a metric that would remove all the land that that would probably be uninhabitable. By taking the arable land, which is land that crops will grow, therefore land that people could possibly reside we get a measure that better suits the argument that Canada's population is in a smaller area and giving a metric that is much, much closer than the "I know it's cheaper for x over y because I said so" comments and the pointless roseate maps. I was hoping to stimulate some factual posting that actually led to someone finding a better metric instead of more un-objective conjecture. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Measuring and comparing the amount of land on which people could reside has no relevance. Rogers is not building on arable, uninhabited areas of Canada with the hope that people will move there. They are instead only building out where people live in large numbers and relatively high density.
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Originally Posted by solipsism
Are you saying that Rogers has no carriers in suburban areas or that Canada has no such sprawls?
Suburban sprawls? Sure. But only in suburban areas that are themselves populated enough to be considered metro areas. In South Western Ontario, the area of Canada with the highest population, you will find that only the cities, large suburban centres and the hwy 401 corridor are covered by Rogers. You will find basically zero coverage in even moderately rural areas. For instance, I live in Waterloo region. We are a very suburban area, but are still in the top 10-15 population centres of the country. We get fairly good Rogers coverage and are even a 3G zone. But, if I drive west 10 minutes from my house, down a regional highway towards a few smaller towns and cities that are basically bedroom communities for us, I lose coverage pretty quick. It is not as bad as it was a couple years ago, but you still don't need to go far to lose coverage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
I don't have number of what their actual costs are. I just have not seen any relevant metrics presented that show any reasons that Rogers costs would be higher. Especially numbers that compare land mass and population of the entire country. Since Canada's population is limited to a small strip along the US border and then further grouped into a few large urban/suburban centres and since Rogers only provides coverage in these areas, it is just silly to talk about the rest of the country geographically. You would be better to compare Roger's build out in Canada to AT&T's build out in a few urban centres in the US. For instance, if you compared AT&T coverage and service in the Boston-Washington-NY area or Southern California.
"Rogers has been criticized for having unusually high data prices relative to their cost to provide service, especially with the launch of iPhone in Canada."
I think that says all we need to know.
Wikipedia is a user-moderated entity, so any wacko can distort it to suit his purposes. The paragraph in question was added on the 28th of this month, and doesn't appear to have undergone any significant amount of peer review since that time. The only citation is a web discussion forum which certainly cannot count as a peer-reviewed scholarly report. In my eyes, that paragraph in that Wikipedia article doesn't carry any more weight than any of the discussions in this forum.
canada lacks competition i thought the people were important, find out who paid off the politicians and demand a new carrier, or protest by not buying the iphone and complain to apple get a petition, call the news agencies, unless they are in rogers pocket. this sucks and i wouldn't get an iphone if those were the conditions. get some picket lines going, businesses should join you to get the costs down.
my post didn't show up so i had to add another, sorry.
isn't this a 3 YEAR CONTRACT, get the protest lines going, petition politicians, get a new gsm carrier, no competition hurts the people and businesses, wow, Canada, that sucks.
protest and don't buy the iphone, tell apple, make an online protest website.
I've used an iPhone since last June on the 1 GB / $65 plan. I use my iPhone *a lot* but I frankly never cracked 180 MB in a month. That includes facebook, livejournal, blog browsing, news sites, youtube, etc.
This plan is way better than their prior pricing.
youtube is about 7MB a minute no?
400MB/7mb/min = 57 Minutes A MONTH of Youtube. 400 MB is NOT enough....
Haave you heard of mobile me? how is Apple going to get iPhones to use Mobile me if customers are priced in to 13MB a day?
Not sure if it has been mentioned here yet or not, but from reading other forums, it looks like Rogers will allow you add their other existing data plans to your currently subscribed voice plan. Also, that the services offered in the 'Value' pack for the iPhone can be had a la carte and added individually. Prices for the a la carte features and the price/data levels of data plans are probably still not to everyone's liking, but at least it shows they might be coming around or at least that there is some flexibility.
I think people still need to be writing to Rogers, calling them up, signing petitions and trying to keep the pressure on so that they offer real value in their packages and options.
I just signed the petition at http://www.ruinediphone.com but the most powerful message to Rogers will be to refrain from buying the iPhone until the plans are reasonable, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Prices are always subject to fine print and are always allowed to be clarified.
The guy in the shop is going to start crying when the carrier starts to charge back on his commissions.
And of course, I don't want any shouting match with you. Babelfish doesn't do Finnish and we have statistics like 92% of Finnish mobile data coming from datacards and dongles --- on Nokia's backyard --- and only 4% coming from Symbian phones.
It makes me think that you got some kind of 3G dongle plan --- it's like mis-selling by the agents and the carriers have given up to try to police/fix the problem because nobody actually buys a Symbian phone in Nokia country to use it as a 3G device.
If you can get away with it --- that's great. It's like people who gets tethering with a $6 WAP plan from T-Mobile USA because they change a few proxy settings.
I don't use a dongle. I can use my N82 to tether. A dongle is basically a phone without a keypad, so why buy one, for me anyway? By the way, most of the phones sold here or the ones I see are all HDSPA capable and if you download one email it goes over the 3G network. You seem to assume that people disable 3G to use GSM. It just ain't happening. 3G is ubiquotis here. It is in everyday life. People use it and have not idea that they are. No one hear says, "oh let me surf the web with my 3G enabled device". They just go and access the net as they see fit.
I just signed the petition at http://www.ruinediphone.com but the most powerful message to Rogers will be to refrain from buying the iPhone until the plans are reasonable, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Exactly. Rogers will only listen to sales. So, even if you are planning to buy one with the shitty packages, wait a few weeks or months to help pressure them to improving their plans.
Signing the petitions, calling news outlets and keeping the discussions going (on and off line) will help ensure as many people as possible are aware of the problem and the best way to affect changes.
I don't use a dongle. I can use my N82 to tether. A dongle is basically a phone without a keypad, so why buy one, for me anyway? By the way, most of the phones sold here or the ones I see are all HDSPA capable and if you download one email it goes over the 3G network. You seem to assume that people disable 3G to use GSM. It just ain't happening. 3G is ubiquotis here. It is in everyday life. People use it and have not idea that they are. No one hear says, "oh let me surf the web with my 3G enabled device". They just go and access the net as they see fit.
You mis-understand me --- I didn't say that Finnish people disable their 3G function and use GSM instead.
I am saying for all the supposedly ubiquotis 3G phones in the land of Nokia --- only 8% of the traffic comes from mobile phones. The other 92% of the traffic comes from pc datacards/usb dongles.
3G is ubiquotis in the US --- Americans don't even know that their zero dollar phone from Verizon is a ev-do phone. That's why 58% of Verizon's customers have a 3G phone (39 million out of 67.2 million total subscribers).
Comments
What exactly is the point you are trying to make? You have stated the population densities of 7 Canadian cities and 9 US cities but have not quantified nor explained anything. I have no idea if you agree with my assessment that we need to look at colonised areas or not.
To further complicate things, you state in an earlier post, "[Solipsism,] your estimates ignore the fact that Canada's cities are densely populated", but then in a later post you post highly populated US cities. I fail to see any bearing the varying population densities have on the argument as it stands.
I'm also confused by your post as I clearly made my case stating that only 4% of the entire Canadian landmass was arable while stating that 18% of the US was arable, which greatly favoured Canada in my equation to determine a closer—yet not exact, as previously stated—estimate of liveable land area that people could reside comfortably, thereby being a potential customer base for the associated carriers.
Besides the point that the Britannica population density of Canadian map from 2002 makes no sense for your argument unless you are asserting that Canadian cities are more densely populated than US cities (which wouldn't make sense), the US map below is not not from Britannica and has red splotches that only vaguely match up with the Canadian map above.
On top of that, there is no legend or explanation of any kind by you to discern the meaning of the red splotches. For all we know they represent the the sales of the original Nintendo Game Boy in North America, which is the only reasonable explanation to its inclusion in your post.
You keep mentioning arable land, as if that was at all related to the question at hand, that is Rogers network substantially more expensive to build and maintain, specifically because of the geography of Canada vs the geography of the US. I don't know much about cell tower construction, but I don't think they grow out of the ground, so what does arable land mass matter? You can throw lots of number around, but if they are not relevant, they don't make sense.
Simply put: Rogers only services urban areas. That is, Rogers only provides any usable coverage in cities and metros. So, icfireball's stats of pop densities of a few cities is actually relevant. Canada only has a very small number of urban centres, where most of our population lives. In fact, the list from icfireball is most of them. There are a few smaller centres, but again, not many. Contrast that with the US, where there are many more than listed. Rogers only had to build enough towers to cover 10-15 centres. For that, they probably have access to 80-90 percent of the Canadian population. How many cities did ATT have to provie coverage to? Still think it was more expensive, per use, or per sq km or any other metric?
What exactly is the point you are trying to make? You have stated the population densities of 7 Canadian cities and 9 US cities but have not quantified nor explained anything. I have no idea if you agree with my assessment that we need to look at colonised areas or not.
To further complicate things, you state in an earlier post, "[Solipsism,] your estimates ignore the fact that Canada's cities are densely populated", but then in a later post you post highly populated US cities. I fail to see any bearing the varying population densities have on the argument as it stands.
I'm also confused by your post as I clearly made my case stating that only 4% of the entire Canadian landmass was arable while stating that 18% of the US was arable, which greatly favoured Canada in my equation to determine a closer—yet not exact, as previously stated—estimate of liveable land area that people could reside comfortably, thereby being a potential customer base for the associated carriers.
Besides the point that the Britannica population density of Canadian map from 2002 makes no sense for your argument unless you are asserting that Canadian cities are more densely populated than US cities (which wouldn't make sense), the US map below is not not from Britannica and has red splotches that only vaguely match up with the Canadian map above.
On top of that, there is no legend or explanation of any kind by you to discern the meaning of the red splotches. For all we know they represent the the sales of the original Nintendo Game Boy in North America, which is the only reasonable explanation to its inclusion in your post.
You're numbers and estimations mean nothing when it comes to profitability.
The purpose of the first map was to demonstrate that within canada, most of the population is centered in a very small land mass and the rest of Canada, the majority of the land has an extremely low population density.
Now take a look at the second map (reproduced below). First, you'll note that this map is even more accurate than the first map because the densities are not boundaries. Next, you'll notice that the population of Canada is heavily centered in a very small area of land along the southern border of Canada. As your eyes wander south you should have noticed that the population centers in the US are more widely dispersed over a larger land mass than in Canada. What this means is that to maintain a reliable network in the U.S., since it's standard for operators to provide free roaming within the U.S., they most cover a greater area of land than in Canada. In Canada, the cell network can be heavily focused in regions of land. To clarify my point one last time, Rogers claims that "our network reaches 94% of the Canadian population." To reach 94% of the Canadian population requires a lot less cell network infrastructure than to reach 94% of the U.S. population.
...so what does arable land mass matter?
For some unknown reason people want to compare Canada to the US in terms of the cell carriers. Then they want to say that Canada has a lot of uninhabited land so I found a metric that would remove all the land that that would probably be uninhabitable. By taking the arable land, which is land that crops will grow, therefore land that people could possibly reside we get a measure that better suits the argument that Canada's population is in a smaller area and giving a metric that is much, much closer than the "I know it's cheaper for x over y because I said so" comments and the pointless roseate maps. I was hoping to stimulate some factual posting that actually led to someone finding a better metric instead of more un-objective conjecture. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Simply put: Rogers only services urban areas.That is, Rogers only provides any usable coverage in cities and metros.
Are you saying that Rogers has no carriers in suburban areas or that Canada has no such sprawls?
So, icfireball's stats of pop densities of a few cities is actually relevant. Canada only has a very small number of urban centres, where most of our population lives. In fact, the list from icfireball is most of them.
And NYC has twice the density of the most dense Canadian city, as per icfireball's post, so how does his posting of some Canadian cities negate the density of US cities?
There are a few smaller centres, but again, not many. Contrast that with the US, where there are many more than listed.
Again, this metric is pointless as stated as the population of the US is 9x as large.
Rogers only had to build enough towers to cover 10-15 centres. For that, they probably have access to 80-90 percent of the Canadian population. How many cities did ATT have to provie coverage to? Still think it was more expensive, per use, or per sq km or any other metric?
Rogers having to put up less towers does not make them cheaper per capita based on that measure along. Here are some simple things that you are not considering:If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
You're numbers and estimations mean nothing when it comes to profitability.
I never said it did, I merely used a metric to remove all the unusual land from Canada to make the playing field more equal. If you have a metric that lowers the 4% figure even more then please post it.
To reach 94% of the Canadian population requires a lot less cell network infrastructure than to reach 94% of the U.S. population.[/B]
Less towers would only mean it's cheaper per capita if everything else is the same. But it's not. Not by a long shot, yet I haven't read where you are considering that in any form.
I never said it did, I merely used a metric to remove all the unusual land from Canada to make the playing field more equal. If you have a metric that lowers the 4% figure even more then please post it.
Less towers would only mean it's cheaper per capita if everything else is the same. But it's not. Not by a long shot, yet I haven't read where you are considering that in any form.
I wasn't arguing for the comprehensive profitability of wireless carriers in the U.S. versus Canada. I was, however, arguing against the assertion that Canada's geographic specifications made it less suited to wireless profitability, and I stand by that. In fact, I think Canada's geographical specifications make it better suited for wireless profitability when compared to that of the U.S.
Rogers having to put up less towers does not make them cheaper per capita based on that measure along. Here are some simple things that you are not considering:If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
As I've said before, the conclusion you reached regarding geographical suitability to profit in the wireless industry in Canada versus the United States is erroneous and therefore not a verifiable metric.
Now onto non geographical factors you mentioned:
The more towers bought the more likely the cost per tower lowers
Cell phone towers are not like cans of soup. The cost will be roughly comparable no matter the volume. The does cost more, however, is to serve a geographically larger metro area. The United States has more metro areas and those metro areas are dispersed over a larger area of land. In addition, the United States has THE largest metro area in the world (New York to Pennsylvania).
Which significantly more carriers in the US AT&T can rent out space, thus lowering the cost
Although true in principle, it is to the benefit of the cell carrier to maintain their own cell towers and network. Every time a cell users uses another networks cell tower to make calls, the cell carrier's network must pay the other network through the nose for the call. In addition, since most United States carriers have free roaming, whereas I've heard Canada doesn't, U.S. carriers would have to pick up the tab on roaming calls, costing them profit. And finally, also consider that the two major carriers in the U.S., AT&T and Verizon, unlike most countries in the world, use competing technologies (GSM and CDMA), and therefore can't use each others networks, so therefore must have their own or use a smaller company's cell towers.
More competition in the US means lower prices as a general rule
Yes, but this would mean Canada has HIGHER profitability!
The US cell penetration rate is 84% compared to Canada's 58%
Penetration rate is directly proportional to the supply and demand. If those statistics are true, perhaps less of the population in Canada doesn't have cell phones because it's cost prohibitive or the canadian wireless industry spends less on advertising.
AT&T has 10x the subscribers of Rogers
The US has 13x the number of mobile customers than Canada
The United States also has 10 times the population of Canada.
Again, this is related to penetration rate and supply and demand. Profitability is based on profit per subscriber, not total number of subscribers or total profit.
Most of your arguments were not related to profitability. Consider this:
You said AT&T has 10 times the number of subscribers than Rogers.
The 2007 revenue of AT&T Mobility was $42.7 billion.
The 2007 revenue of Rogers wireless w as $4.01 billion.
This equates to $4.27 billion for AT&T compared with $4.01 billion for Rogers for the same number of customers. I think you'll find these very equal. I would have included statistics on profit, but I couldn't find them, and profit is not indicative of profitability. Consider that AT&T may spend more money on voluntary expenses like R&D or advertising expenses than Rogers.
According to Wikipedia:
"Rogers has been criticized for having unusually high data prices relative to their cost to provide service, especially with the launch of iPhone in Canada."
I think that says all we need to know.
For some unknown reason people want to compare Canada to the US in terms of the cell carriers. Then they want to say that Canada has a lot of uninhabited land so I found a metric that would remove all the land that that would probably be uninhabitable. By taking the arable land, which is land that crops will grow, therefore land that people could possibly reside we get a measure that better suits the argument that Canada's population is in a smaller area and giving a metric that is much, much closer than the "I know it's cheaper for x over y because I said so" comments and the pointless roseate maps. I was hoping to stimulate some factual posting that actually led to someone finding a better metric instead of more un-objective conjecture. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Measuring and comparing the amount of land on which people could reside has no relevance. Rogers is not building on arable, uninhabited areas of Canada with the hope that people will move there. They are instead only building out where people live in large numbers and relatively high density.
Are you saying that Rogers has no carriers in suburban areas or that Canada has no such sprawls?
Suburban sprawls? Sure. But only in suburban areas that are themselves populated enough to be considered metro areas. In South Western Ontario, the area of Canada with the highest population, you will find that only the cities, large suburban centres and the hwy 401 corridor are covered by Rogers. You will find basically zero coverage in even moderately rural areas. For instance, I live in Waterloo region. We are a very suburban area, but are still in the top 10-15 population centres of the country. We get fairly good Rogers coverage and are even a 3G zone. But, if I drive west 10 minutes from my house, down a regional highway towards a few smaller towns and cities that are basically bedroom communities for us, I lose coverage pretty quick. It is not as bad as it was a couple years ago, but you still don't need to go far to lose coverage.
If you have viable facts to back up your claims that Canadian carrier costs are lower than the US then post it, but useless images of America with a rash isn't going to cut it. At least try to use a verifiable metric.
I don't have number of what their actual costs are. I just have not seen any relevant metrics presented that show any reasons that Rogers costs would be higher. Especially numbers that compare land mass and population of the entire country. Since Canada's population is limited to a small strip along the US border and then further grouped into a few large urban/suburban centres and since Rogers only provides coverage in these areas, it is just silly to talk about the rest of the country geographically. You would be better to compare Roger's build out in Canada to AT&T's build out in a few urban centres in the US. For instance, if you compared AT&T coverage and service in the Boston-Washington-NY area or Southern California.
And one more thing:
According to Wikipedia:
"Rogers has been criticized for having unusually high data prices relative to their cost to provide service, especially with the launch of iPhone in Canada."
I think that says all we need to know.
Wikipedia is a user-moderated entity, so any wacko can distort it to suit his purposes. The paragraph in question was added on the 28th of this month, and doesn't appear to have undergone any significant amount of peer review since that time. The only citation is a web discussion forum which certainly cannot count as a peer-reviewed scholarly report. In my eyes, that paragraph in that Wikipedia article doesn't carry any more weight than any of the discussions in this forum.
my post didn't show up so i had to add another, sorry.
protest and don't buy the iphone, tell apple, make an online protest website.
http://www.reportonbusiness.com/serv.../Business/home
And here is another petition...
http://www.petitiononline.com/iPhone99/
I've used an iPhone since last June on the 1 GB / $65 plan. I use my iPhone *a lot* but I frankly never cracked 180 MB in a month. That includes facebook, livejournal, blog browsing, news sites, youtube, etc.
This plan is way better than their prior pricing.
youtube is about 7MB a minute no?
400MB/7mb/min = 57 Minutes A MONTH of Youtube. 400 MB is NOT enough....
Haave you heard of mobile me? how is Apple going to get iPhones to use Mobile me if customers are priced in to 13MB a day?
I think people still need to be writing to Rogers, calling them up, signing petitions and trying to keep the pressure on so that they offer real value in their packages and options.
Prices are always subject to fine print and are always allowed to be clarified.
The guy in the shop is going to start crying when the carrier starts to charge back on his commissions.
And of course, I don't want any shouting match with you. Babelfish doesn't do Finnish and we have statistics like 92% of Finnish mobile data coming from datacards and dongles --- on Nokia's backyard --- and only 4% coming from Symbian phones.
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.c...a-traffic.html
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.c...artphones.html
It makes me think that you got some kind of 3G dongle plan --- it's like mis-selling by the agents and the carriers have given up to try to police/fix the problem because nobody actually buys a Symbian phone in Nokia country to use it as a 3G device.
If you can get away with it --- that's great. It's like people who gets tethering with a $6 WAP plan from T-Mobile USA because they change a few proxy settings.
I don't use a dongle. I can use my N82 to tether. A dongle is basically a phone without a keypad, so why buy one, for me anyway? By the way, most of the phones sold here or the ones I see are all HDSPA capable and if you download one email it goes over the 3G network. You seem to assume that people disable 3G to use GSM. It just ain't happening. 3G is ubiquotis here. It is in everyday life. People use it and have not idea that they are. No one hear says, "oh let me surf the web with my 3G enabled device". They just go and access the net as they see fit.
I just signed the petition at http://www.ruinediphone.com but the most powerful message to Rogers will be to refrain from buying the iPhone until the plans are reasonable, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Exactly. Rogers will only listen to sales. So, even if you are planning to buy one with the shitty packages, wait a few weeks or months to help pressure them to improving their plans.
Signing the petitions, calling news outlets and keeping the discussions going (on and off line) will help ensure as many people as possible are aware of the problem and the best way to affect changes.
It takes a lot of incompetence to make Bell look good, but Rogers and Apple now look like profiteering idiots.
I don't use a dongle. I can use my N82 to tether. A dongle is basically a phone without a keypad, so why buy one, for me anyway? By the way, most of the phones sold here or the ones I see are all HDSPA capable and if you download one email it goes over the 3G network. You seem to assume that people disable 3G to use GSM. It just ain't happening. 3G is ubiquotis here. It is in everyday life. People use it and have not idea that they are. No one hear says, "oh let me surf the web with my 3G enabled device". They just go and access the net as they see fit.
You mis-understand me --- I didn't say that Finnish people disable their 3G function and use GSM instead.
I am saying for all the supposedly ubiquotis 3G phones in the land of Nokia --- only 8% of the traffic comes from mobile phones. The other 92% of the traffic comes from pc datacards/usb dongles.
3G is ubiquotis in the US --- Americans don't even know that their zero dollar phone from Verizon is a ev-do phone. That's why 58% of Verizon's customers have a 3G phone (39 million out of 67.2 million total subscribers).