Oh Canada! Rogers gives iPhone users an expensive rogering

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 29 June 2008 13:32

Mobility

Canada’s dominant telco, Rogers, has announced its voice and data plans for the upcoming iPhone 3G. For the love of Steve Jobs (and God), please don’t let anything like these plans surface in Australia!

The big North American rip-off happens in a little ol’ place called Canada, where the effective monopoly GSM/3G telco is Rogers. So expensive are its services in general that it charges even more for voice and data than Australia’s dominant telco, Telstra!

From July 11, Canadians can line up to “enjoy” the benefit of having a radical and highly expensive surgical wallet transplant process, carefully extracting said wallet from their back pockets and directly transplanting it into the bank account of Rogers.

The risk of going over the voice and data limits in Rogers’ iPhone plans are also high and could cause a further expensive transfusion of cash if patients – I mean, Canadian iPhone users, aren’t careful.

Unfortunately for potential Canadian owners the procedure lasts for at least three years, with no prospects of recovery at any time and a likely need for continual sedating medication to prevent patients from realising what’s going on and going back into shock.

Indeed so bleak is the situation that protests have erupted on the Internet, with even an open letter written to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to see if he can convince Rogers to lower their prices.

Sadly that will likely have as much chance as a snowball in hell, leaving Rogers secure in the knowledge its lucrative telecommunications business won’t be dropping the “lucrative” tag anytime soon.

Of course iPhone ownership is totally voluntary, even in Canada, so only the brave and the cashed up will take the risk of the iPhone medical money transplant procedure.

That said, many Canadians needing mobile communications for business, safety and to communicate with family and friends have already undergone this risky procedure with all manner of other mobile telephone devices and have similarly needed to undergo the horrific wallet transplant process, so at least Canadians are somewhat used regular financial violation.

While few are happy about it, expensive telecommunications is a simple fact of life in Canada, like ice hockey, French, saying ‘aboot’ and forever having to pay for more goods and services than their US cousins south of the border.

So, just how much are Canadians set to be ripped off by, and how does it compare to the prices Americans will pay for using the iPhone 3G? CONTINUED on page 2...