Screw you Rogers
Well Rogers is going to be screwing the Canadian's royally that's for sure. The details are here for the new iPhone plans. But a quick precis.
- A three year mandatory contract. Yes three years, twice as long as O2, 1 year longer than AT&T.
- The top plan $115 a month (about 57 pounds or 133 US dollars) gets you 800 minutes daytime, unlimited evening and weeknds and 2gb of data.
- For an extra $20 a month you get "Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax" and evenings starting at 6pm (apparently its normally 9pm)
Wow so that's a monthly cost $135 + $6.95 (system access fee) + 13% (plus GST and PST) = $5,776.56 in monthly fees over 3 years. Let's compare this to some other countries:
| Data | Daytime | Evenings | Text | Length | Cost per month | Handset cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | Unlimited | 450 | Unlimited | 200 | 24 months | 70 CAD | 200 CAD + 36 CAD |
| UK | Unlimited | 1200 | Unlimited | 500 | 18 months | ~90 CAD | Free |
| Canada | 2GB | 800 | Unlimited | 300 | 36 months | ~160 CAD | 199 CAD |
The most expensive Canadian plan is outshone by the third most expensive O2 plan (source) and the cheapest AT+T plan (source). Yes I'm assuming unlimited data is the most important.
Shame on Rogers and shame on Apple, who know damn well what the costs were going to be. I can only hope the sales are dismal and instead in 6 months time Rogers loosen up or competition comes into the market place.
Update: <a href="http://fuckyourogers.com/>This site says it all</a>.