“The iPhone will hit Europe this week, and at prices that are likely to put pressure on Rogers Communications Inc. to cut its cellphone rates if it wants to be the carrier that eventually brings the popular device to Canada,” Catherine McLean reports for The Globe and Mail Update.
“European carriers will offer service plans that start at the equivalent of $70 a month. A rough calculation based on Rogers’ current fees for its existing cellphone services indicates that similar features are more than double the price here, based on the cheapest plan. With some other data plans for Rogers’ cellphones, customers could rack up bills of hundreds, or conceivably thousands, of dollars,” McLean reports.
“Apple wants to see the iPhone reach millions of consumers, and high rates in Canada could interfere with that goal,” McLean reports.
“Wireless carriers in the United States, Britain and Germany had to adjust their packages of services to get the opportunity to sell the coveted iPhone. So the phone’s arrival in Canada may not be entirely up to Apple. Rogers may have to make concessions, either by slashing data prices or finally embracing the idea of WiFi for cellphones,” McLean reports.
“There’s a reason carriers are willing to make such adjustments. The iPhone is the most talked-about cellphone in history, creating instant buzz around a carrier’s brand. Time magazine just crowned the iPhone the year’s best invention,” McLean reports.
“With companies that introduce the iPhone, the biggest change is the way services are bundled. At AT&T and O2, voice minutes and data services are packaged together for one flat price, instead of forcing users to cobble together different plans. T-Mobile combines a plan with cellular data and WiFi hot spots for the first time. And the rates for these plans are very appealing,” McLean reports.
Full article here.
Leave it to Apple to cure the insanity of Canada’s outrageous mobile phone rates.
“stop fleecing customers”
But doesn’t that keep them warm in the winters?…
<“stop fleecing customers”
But doesn’t that keep them warm in the winters?…>
The shearers, not the sheep…
MacDailyNews Take: Leave it to Apple to cure the insanity of Canada’s outrageous mobile phone rates.
Well…here’s hoping!
OTOH. Broadcom has got there stuff onto 1 chip finally, so perhaps we will see iPhones on something besides GSM. I would like to see what Telus could do with an iPhone that works with CDMA. Bell can go pound sand. Or beavers, if you have seen their commercials lately.
MW-word. how weird is that?
In Canada, Rogers is often called Robbers for good reason. I hate that company. (Although, I will begrudgingly switch to it if they ever get around to offer the iPhone here.)
Rogers is a proof that corruption is everywhere.
Canada’s technology is monopolized by politicians and their corporate friends.
time for Rogers to get a clue
when I first got my Treo 650 a few years ago, they charged $30/month for 3MB (that’s right, megabytes!) of data, on top of a consumer voice plan. just think of the web pages you could browse with that (not that the Blazer browser in the Treo is worth using)
it’s better now, but not by much – e.g. $10/month for a whopping 10MB of data.
the business plans may be better, but their pricing plans are so complex it’s impossible to figure out.
So is it over and out, Rogers?
There’s no cure. Just take it out to the woods for a “long walk”.
If only someone had created a global network of satellites that could offer cellphone service anywhere.
I was in my local Rogers shop yesterday. I keep naging the poor bugger into telling me what he knew about the date of the release. I get the feeling that they are getting tired of the same questions all the time. He was ready to toss me out of the store!!! And he said that if I brought an unlock iPhone to them today, they would gladly put a sim card in it for me….. They’ve done it twice in that place in the last month.
Macromancer:
I heard a company tried that years ago but the satellites were made of a dense, very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family causing the whole network to collapse. Yeah, that was it.
@ Macromancer and Mauritius Kestrel:
The satellite company that tried it was Iridium. It was an ambitious goal. However, in my opinion, it was killed by poor management.
AJ:
Duh? I thought that’s what I said!
“a dense, very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum family”
Don’t make me spell everything out! We need more confusion on these threads. Sheesh!
“The satellite company that tried it was Iridium. It was an ambitious goal. However, in my opinion, it was killed by poor management.”
Uh, yeah that was sorta the thing I was going for there
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P.S. Iridium also probably failed because Motorola couldn’t freely scale its chips. Loose pun intended.
And yes, I’m making this stuff up as I go. Because I can.
MW: had, as in you’ve been.
I was told by someone at Rogers that they are not as BIG as Europe so the cost of reducing their ‘fleecing’ is not worth having the iPhone…they would lose money.
The problem is that I do not think there is an alternative carrier in Canada so they seem to be in the drivers seat.
In other words the only iPhone in Canada will be an American bought-unlocked one….sigh! The only advantage is that it will be cheaper for us not that the Canadian dollar has zoomed by the sinking US dollar.
I have an iphone and work in Toronto and it is set up with Rogers I decide to access the internet through the phone not Wi-Fi I went to one page google.ca and exited and that was it. Then I received a bill for 37$ for going to one page….I called them and they fixed it but I decided not to use the internet through my phone….lesion learned
Lov hating on Rogers
errr…that should read…NOW that the loonie is worth more than a greenback.
Telus, Bell, Sprint, AT&T;Canada, Primus
dump Rogers now
Rogers is pretty tight with RIMM and has made a boat load of money on blackberry stuff. If they are the roadblock to Canada, why change? They keep outrageous fees and still sell phones. As much as I would love an iPhone, Canada’s corruption starts at Rogers and Bell.
They operate similarly to the mafia..actually, they make the mafia look nice. You will buy it from us, you will lock in long term, we will fleece you monthly for pizzo/airtime, if the piece of crap phone we sold you breaks before your contract expires you must buy one at full price and live out your contract, and you can’t change mafia networks without throwing away the one you have. Pricing will be 6-10 times more than just south of the border, because it costs more to service Canada than Vermont,Illinois or Washington. Don’t expect Rogers to give up squat to get the phone. Apple doesn’t get to choose a provider in Canada so they may just forego Canada.
Yeah, just buy iPhone like in the US…
direct from Apple store or from AT&T;Canada.
And activate only with AT&T;.
Rogers is only around because of it’s AT&T;connection.
Strange cos AT&T;in the US was once MaBell…
so isn’t Rogers really Bell in fleece clothing?
j
Apple will sell the iPhone in Canada just as soon as it sets up its own network.
Why bother dealing with companies that think they have a monopoly? All Apple needs is a network in around ten cities and they would have about 90% of the population covered.
I know it’s not their business model, but for Canada, it would probably work.
@ Macromancer, Mauritius Kestrel, AJ:
There are currently four satellite phone companies operating, with Iridium the most successful. Iridium currently has over 200,000 subscribers, mostly industrial and military. Their subscriber base in Louisiana went up 500% during Katrina.
When Iridium went bankrupt in 2000, private investors bought its assets, which cost Motorola $5 billion, for $25 million. Iridium has 66 active satellites in low earth orbit, plus 9 spare satellites to replace ones that fail. They have been profitable for the past seven quarters, are planning an IPO, and will start replacing their existing satellites in 2013.
“All Apple needs is a network in around ten cities and they would have about 90% of the population covered.”
Actually, the top 10 cities in Canada only comprise about 50% of the population, so you’d need a bit more than that, but the basic idea would hold. Hardest would be the prairie provinces where population is most dispersed, as opposed to places like BC or Ontario where most of the province lives in a few metropolitan areas (Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, Ottawa, etc.)
Rogers and RIM are cozy, and they have ‘friends’ all over Ottawa.