Andy McKay

Jun 27, 2008

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>.