That would make little difference in Canada - Rogers is the only company in Canada with a network compatible with the iPhone. New players are expected in Canada in 2009 however.
.... I set up an appointment to pick up my iPhone for next Friday 3 weeks ago via my local Rogers rep because the iPhone was not being sold in the Apple Retail Store (ARS). Why would I bother to check out my ARS? I have a corporate account and I was inquiring if my corporate discount was applicable.
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!
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?
What I think is most frustrating about the Canadian situation is the following list:
1. 3 year contracts
2. system access fees
3. no GSM competition
4. a country with much better plans is right next door
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.
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!
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?
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.
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!!
That's the pot calling the kettle black on the part of Apple. Apple's not offering a full retail unlocked version of the iPhone is just as egregious and anti-consumer as Roger's or any of the other providers' gouging.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
Quote:
Originally Posted by nderksen
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Comments
That would make little difference in Canada - Rogers is the only company in Canada with a network compatible with the iPhone. New players are expected in Canada in 2009 however.
New players? Evidence?
.... I set up an appointment to pick up my iPhone for next Friday 3 weeks ago via my local Rogers rep because the iPhone was not being sold in the Apple Retail Store (ARS). Why would I bother to check out my ARS? I have a corporate account and I was inquiring if my corporate discount was applicable.
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.
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?
What I think is most frustrating about the Canadian situation is the following list:
1. 3 year contracts
2. system access fees
3. no GSM competition
4. a country with much better plans is right next door
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.
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?
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.
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!!!
Still, I can't wait to get my iPhone!! LOL
We built an iphone plan advisor www.billshrink.com
http://gizmodo.com/5023036/billshrin...iphone-3g-plan
Let us know what you think.
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.
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
contracts shouldn't be more than 12-18months
That's the pot calling the kettle black on the part of Apple. Apple's not offering a full retail unlocked version of the iPhone is just as egregious and anti-consumer as Roger's or any of the other providers' gouging.
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."
engadget.com (blog post subpage) 420KB
yahoo.com (news article subpage) 585KB
nytimes.com (news article subpage) 345KB
seedmagazine.com (article subpage) 223KB
discovermagazine.com (article subpage) 731KB
livescience.com (article subpage) 438KB
tgdaily.com (article subpage) 253KB
technologyreview.com (article subpage) 247KB
macrumors.com (forum page) 217KB
tmz.com (blog post subpage) 433KB
Average sub-page data size: 389KB/page.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Like AT&T, text messages goes against your account whether or not you pick them up.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
And do you find this acceptable?