Contrary to reports: Rogers iPhone base plan $60/400MB data
As per Engadget, there was no way Rogers would ever release unlimited data for the iPhone. The base plan starts at $60 per month, only has 150 minutes (plus unlimited evenings and weekends) and has a 400MB data cap.
Apologies about my previously optimistic post on the subject, but the lesson here is “listen to financial reports and not random dealers posting online.”
The more interesting plan is a $20 addon mentioned, which includes:
Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax, 10,000 Sent Text Messages and 6:00 p.m. Early Evening Calling and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes.
This will mark the first time Rogers will publicly make a massive text message plan available. Prior to this, all plans were capped at 2500 sent messages unless you weaseled Retentions into the unadvertised “unlimited” package.
Lewis:
This announcement is predictable. Makes sense too.
But come on! These are not unreasonable prices! Consider, up until a week ago, anything more than 25 MB of data would end up costing how much? $10 a byte? Look at my Rogers Wireless data bill! It’s only $873 this month! What a bargain!
Measly voice allotments, and what about family plan? And visual voicemail? I’ve never had normal voicemail, why would I care about visual voicemail? And likely, you still have to pay for normal voicemail before the visual part will work. ??
But does visual voicemail work without call display? How could it possibly show a list of callers and their associated voicemails without knowing who called?
And 10,000 SMS? Come on! Who sends, or has the time to send, 333.33 (or more) SMS per day, every day?
One interesting omission: Home Calling Zone. iPhone has wifi, so shouldn’t it be able to do HCZ?
What of the device price? For existing customers?
More importantly: the BlackBerry Bold? When is that coming?
June 27, 2008, 1:47 pmLewis:
The “hotspot” network is provided by Telus, Bell, Rogers, and Fido. Each location is serviced by one of the companies, but users from all companies can log on any network’s hotspot.
So, does that mean only the Rogers/Fido serviced locations? Or all hotspot locations?
June 27, 2008, 1:49 pmJ. Alexander Cohen:
Unreasonable prices? I pay $7/month for unlimited data on my HTC Touch through Bell Mobility…yeah, sucks to be iPhone.
June 27, 2008, 3:12 pmLewis:
You have a what?
Exactly my point. Who wants something without the bling factor? The common person has never heard of HTC, nor cares.
Now, BlackBerry, Apple, iPhone; these are all household brand names.
June 27, 2008, 3:42 pmJake Billo:
Totally with you on the prices. However, this base package may be in contention for “worst iPhone plan in the world” with its measly (comparatively! especially to the US!) limitations. That label might be hard for any marketing department to get past. Hell, O2 Ireland (the first carrier to cap iPhone plans, IIRC) allows 1GB data transfer, base.
Maybe I’ll actually do some research and post a sensational topic to see if there’s a reaction…
newspapers seem to do it all the time.
iPhone 2.0 does not have UMA (Home Calling Zone) support built in - this is likely the same case with the BB Bold unfortunately. I know RIM ties the certificates for a particular provider’s UMA to the DeviceID - which prevents me from using my T-Mobile 8320 with HCZ. Unless Rogers and Apple were to specifically enable the root certificates, it’s unlikely to happen.
(Speaking of which, anyone with a Rogers-branded 8120 should send me the full output of the Options > WiFi Connections > Wi-Fi Diagnostics > Display Mode > Advanced screen - specifically the serving UNC address and the security gateway address. I might be able to work something out with those.)
SMS - a TON of people stick with Telus since they are the only Canadian provider with truly unlimited text messaging. People at RIM internally whine about how much their kids use the service and were shocked with $300+ overages on their personal bills for text messaging. It’s possible and it does happen.
The Bold - I’d trust whatever Engadget and Boy Genius Report are saying. They were often more correct than our internal release schedules.
Expect Rogers by the end of July at latest, likely mid-month.
June 28, 2008, 12:21 amLewis:
To my surprise, Mail.app had your comment, but my BlackBerry did not.
Attempting a visit to the Rogers BIS site resulted in getting forwarded to https://bis.t-mobile.com/html/index.html, with a “Service temporarily unavailable due to maintenance. Please try again later” message.
I only know one person with an 8120, and he lives in Kitchener. But since he only just got this BB as his first mobile device ever, I’m not sure he would know how to find this information. I can ask.
Have you tried to go to a wireless dealer, ask to test the 8120, and just browse to that information yourself?
June 28, 2008, 1:18 amLewis:
And the wap version is also down.
What will this BIS upgrade mean for OS 4.2? Likely nothing, right?
June 28, 2008, 1:21 amJake Billo:
All North American BIS at http://bis.na.blackberry.com/html/?brand=bisgeneric is down during the early morning hours (supposed to be 2AM-6AM, but they may have started earlier) this weekend for an upgrade. That plus 4.5 OS software should enable HTML email, native Hotmail push support, and pave the way for Windows Live Messenger on all carriers.
Re: the 8120: I should try and get to a dealer to find that information out. What I’m thinking of is customizing DNS settings on my home router to try and point those servers to Rogers’ UMA gateways. Certificates might still be a problem, but they could likely be activated through Desktop Manager if I could purloin a device for a few minutes. This may only be an issue for me until I get back to RIM in September - and have my usual distribution lists available to find out the exact issue.
June 28, 2008, 1:24 amJake Billo:
WAP would also be down. The upgrade is for all NA services. If you were to try an Asia/Pacific carrier you’d probably already see BIS 2.5.
For OS 4.2, the only major difference would be BIS-side: Hotmail and Live.(com|ca|etc…) accounts are now enabled globally for push access, and without a separate subscription.
I’m not sure of any other projects that got in under this deadline, and I would *definitely* be breaking my NDA if I mentioned which possible ones were included. I’m just reporting what I know to be common knowledge from Engadget and BGR; like I said before they often are aware of stuff that’s in the very early planning stages.
June 28, 2008, 1:30 amTerri:
Is it true with Rogers Canada they send you the transaction of EVERY sent and recieved text message with your phone bill? like wtf. I haven’t gotten my first one yet but I don’t want a whole bunch of crap. Can someone let me know?
August 22, 2008, 4:58 amJake Billo:
I don’t believe they send text message details; just the total sent/received and call transactions (incoming and outgoing) if you have detailed billing on your line. In any event, I’d recommend online billing for the convenience factor if you’re OK with not getting a paper statement.
August 22, 2008, 7:29 pm