Oh Canada! Rogers gives iPhone users an expensive rogering

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 29 June 2008 14:32

Your IT - Mobility

Ok, so here’s the choice of plans that Canadians wanting a Rogers iPhone 3G are forced to choose from, with all the following prices in Canadian dollars.

To start with, all plans require a massive three year contract, which compares with two years in the US, likely two years in Australia and only 18 months in the UK, and it appears you’ll still need to pay the equivalent of US $199 for the 8GB iPhone 3G and US $299 for the 16GB model.

All the following plans also come with unlimited evening and weekend minutes which is at least something, unlimited incoming text messages and unlimited voicemail messages using Visual Voicemail.

For the curious, “evening minutes” are listed as being from 9pm to 7am Monday to Friday, and “weekend minutes” are from 9 pm Friday to 7am Monday.

The cheapest plan starts at CAD $60 per month, which gives you 150 voice minutes you can use at any time and 75 text messages you can send out.

You also get a paltry 400MB of data transfer which Rogers tries to rationalise as ‘up to 200,000 text emails or 3,100 web pages or 1,360 photo attachments’.

Of course any combination of email, web browsing or sending photo attachments lowers those numbers accordingly, and it also forgets the iPhone can be used to watch YouTube videos, receive Google Maps data and download apps from the App Store, along with whatever data those new download apps will use, all of which could potentially chew through your data usage limits much faster.

To make up for the low data plans (of which we’ll see the rest in a moment), Rogers offers free Wi-Fi access at all of its own hotspots, and at Fido hotspots, a company which was once a competitor but which Rogers now owns.

The next plan costs $75 per month, gives you 300 anytime voice minutes, 100 outgoing text messages, and a 750MB data cap.

Rogers says that 750MB is good for "up to 380,000 text emails or 5,900 web pages or 2,560 photo attachments."

If you can spare $100 per month, you’ll get 600 anytime minutes, 200 outgoing text messages and a 1GB data cap. Rogers says this is good for "up to 524,000 text emails or 8,000 web pages or 3,500 photo attachments."

Those who can spare a few dollars more can opt for the $115 per month plan, giving you 800 anytime minutes, 300 outgoing text messages and a 2GB data cap, which is rationalised as “up to 1,048,000 text emails or 16,000 web pages or 7,000 photo attachments."

If you go over these limits, you’ll have to pay 35c per minute for additional weekday minutes on the $60 plan, 35c per minute on the $75 plan, 25c per minute on the $100 plan and 15c per minute on the $115 plan.

Additional text messages will be charged at 15c per message, while going over your data cap means paying 50c per MB for the first 60 megabytes, and then 3c per MB thereafter.

You can also opt for one of two ‘value packs’ which give you features that frankly should come as standard. Pay up an addition $15 per month and you’ll get Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax, 2,500 Sent Text Messages and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes.

Stump up $20 per month and you get Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax, 10,000 Sent Text Messages and 6pm Early Evening Calling and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes.

So, how does all of this compare with AT&T’s prices? Continued on page 3.