My Macinations

Why I won’t be getting an iPhone on July 11th or anytime in the near future?

Well, it’s simple. Blame Rogers.

Being a webmaster, I would love to get an iPhone. The internet access that it provides gives me a lot of convenience with regards to checking the health status of my servers and other internet related stuff.

When the iPhone’s arrival in Canada was finally announced by Apple and Rogers, I was very excited, although, not exactly hopeful.

See, I’ve been dealing with Rogers for a long, long, long time. I knew their philosophy. Rogers philosophy has been very consistent and simple: Let’s see how much we can screw our customers.

With that knowledge, I had predicted (in a comment posting on another blog) that Rogers’ iPhone plans would give something like 200 MB of internet bandwidth for $60. I was a bit off and fairly surprised that they provided double that bandwidth for that $60.

However, when the official plans were revealed I got to read the fine print, my suspicions were confirmed. Rogers had created awesome f*%k-the-customer plans.

See, to get that 400 MB for $60 plan with reasonable features, you actually have to pay:

1. $60 for the plan
2. $15 for “iPhone value pack”
   (who would use their cell phone without call display?)
3. $6.95 “System access fee”
   (a bogus fee that they used to make people believe it was a government thing.)
4. $0.50 for mandatory 911 access
   (why is this not buried in the price to begin with?)

And everything is taxed at 13% (in Ontario).

($60 + $15 + $6.95 + $0.50) * 1.13 = $93.17

$93.17 For basic iPhone service that includes a measly 400 MB of data access with a paltry 150 anytime-minutes. If this is not a f*%k the customer plan, I don’t know what is.

$40 (+taxes) more per month gets you 2 GB of data and 800 anytime-minutes.

The kicker is that these plans come only with a three years contract. So Rogers gets to screw you harder for much longer.

$93 per month won’t bankrupt me, but I have this thing called principle: I refuse to get screwed willingly by a monopoly.

I survived without an iPhone so far and I will continue to do so.

I have five friends and we were set to get an iPhone each, but with these ridiculous cost plans, our minds have been changed. Well, except maybe one of us who is more of an attention whore than the rest – he would pay that ridiculous price just to say “hey look at me, I have an iPhone’. So right here, Apple has lost 5 (maybe 6) potential iPhone sales.

Today, around the web, there are plenty of articles about how Apple is reprimanding/punishing Rogers for those atrocious plans by reducing the iPhone shipments to Canada.

I don’t think it is punishment nor retribution. Apple is a business and they must have realized that Rogers would never sell that many iPhones with those rates, so they redirected those phones to places that are more likely to sell them than Rogers.

So the question at the end of my previous article “Apple’s iPhone coming to Canada” has been answered:

The answer is a big fat “NO”.

The predictions that I made in my other article about the reasonableness of Rogers upcoming plans in my other article “Has Apple met its match in Rogers?” have come true.

Sometime I hate being right.

Yes, Rogers sucks.

Update: After going through a couple of occasions where I had to drive a long distance back to home in order to have access to my networks to fix stuff and after Rogers allowed you to add a data plan on top of any of their normal plans, I got an iPhone and I’ve been happy with it. The plan costs me $60 per month.

It’s now February 4th, 2008 and the iPhone has been out in the US for more than seven months already.

Here in Canada, there is no mention of it yet. Not even rumours that it could be coming any time soon. I believe it will be a very long time before Canadians could buy an iPhone legitimately and use it in Canada.

This is due to the nature of the Rogers company in Canada.

For those outside of Canada, Rogers is one of the telecom giants in this country. It is a cable and cellular provider and it is the only cellular provider in Canada using the GSM system. So that makes it the only company that can have the iPhone on its network.

And for those fortunate enough to never have had to deal with Rogers, Rogers is one of the worst companies here in this country. When they were my cable providers, they had the worst service, worst customer service and they jacked up their prices regularly. It’s hard to believe, but when I was with them, they jacked up the price of the good channels package by $1 every four months. The package was basically any channel other than the local ones and it started at $8.95. Four years later the price for the package had reached $21.

I had vowed to never deal with them and I changed from their cable service to Bell’s satellite service, which while isn’t the greatest, is still better than Rogers. However, Rogers went and bought my cellular provider Fido, the only other cellular provider here with GSM. So now, I’m back with Rogers involuntarily. Bell’s cellular service sucks, so it’s not even a choice.

So now with Rogers the only cellular provider able to carry the iPhone, the chances of the iPhone coming to Canada, on any reasonable terms, are almost slim to none. Rogers doesn’t have any incentive to give Apple any good deal and doesn’t have any incentive to give its own customers a reasonable deal on its data plans.

Why would it want to? Nobody else can have the iPhone currently and Apple can’t offer the iPhone advantage to anybody else in the country at this time. So Rogers can take their sweet time to get the deal that serves them best.

However, if Rogers stay stubborn, they may lose big time.

I heard whispers that Telus (the third cellular provider in the country) is in the early stages of switching from CDMA to GSM; mostly to get the iPhone.

Let’s hope that this rumour is true and that it happens fast enough to get the second generation iPhone. It would be sweet. It would allow me to get an iPhone (without having to buy one and crack it) and move away from Rogers at the same time.

Everybody knows that Apple’s iPhone is coming to Canada, eventually. Most people and publications speculate about when this momentous event will happen.

Today, few websites are excited about a blip that showed up on Apple’s site, and are extrapolating all kind of data from this blip.

Personally, I’m not exactly interested in when the iPhone will come to Canada. I know that it will. I would love to get one. But, it all depends on the ‘How Much?’ bit of the big picture.

Those outside of Canada probably have no clue on how ridiculous Canada’s wireless industry is.

For example, I’m with Fido (which was bought out by Rogers more than a year ago). I have their cheapest plan for my phone, which they advertise as “200 anytime minutes for $20 a month”. I have one additional service added – caller ID display – for an additional $3 per month. After fees and taxes and various ‘bend-over-to-stick-it-to-you-some-more’ additions to my bill, I pay $37.05 per month, not including any long distance calls that I may make.

So, the iPhone’s biggest question would be: how much will the data plans cost here in Canada?

Apple has been able to negotiate interesting deals with the carriers for iPhone buyers. I wonder if they can improve the situation here. I’m not too hopeful.

In Canada, the only GSM carrier is Fido and Rogers. But since Rogers bought Fido, effectively, there is only Rogers that can carry the iPhone.

Here is Rogers’ and Fido’s current data plans:

The screen capture came from this page.

Yes boys and girls, your eyes are not tricking you. That’s $1 per MB, up to 10 MB and each additional MB is an astonishing $30.72 + 14% taxes.

Rogers’ subsidiary Fido has more reasonable data plan rates, but still:

The screen capture came from this page.

Their only ‘reasonable’ data plan is $100 for up to 200 MB + $5 per additional MB. The cheaper ones are even more ridiculous than their parent company.

Compare the above to ATT’s data plan in the US at $20 for Unlimited data usage.

So while we know the iPhone is coming to Canada, the real question is: When the iPhone comes to Canada, will it be reasonable to buy and use?