So, Rogers has stated that for twenty days after the iPhone is released, people can get a 6GB data plan for $30. Add on the $25 or so talk time plan, and then all the fees that go along with it like the system access fee, 911 fee, and whatnot, and you are looking at close to $75 per month for what will end up being around two hours of talk time and six gigabytes of data transfer.
To be honest, I don’t need or want the talk time, as I don’t really need a cell phone, but even at $75 for 6GB of data, that could be a very reasonable amount of data transfer, at what I consider to be an almost reasonable price.
I have been watching how crazy Canadians are getting about the Rogers iPhone situation, and while I agree that something needs to be done, I must also concede that $30 for 6GB of transfer is fair and more than enough for more than two thirds of Canadians that would buy an iPhone.
Even if you only browse pages that are 1MB each, that still provides you with over six thousand page views in a month, or two hundred a day.
I think that Rogers shouldn’t put a time limitation on this deal, and I think that they should make the barrier for entry as low as possible because they will have each iPhone user in a three year contract deal. At seventy-five dollars a month over three years, Rogers looks to earn $2700 per iPhone, and that doesn’t include the $199 or $299 cost to purchase.
I don’t think Rogers should complain about giving their users a break, and if this $30 for 6GB deal makes sense for a limited time, why not forever? Also, I think Canadian consumers have to give Rogers some slack. They won’t create an unlimited access account level, and so we have to be reasonable within the rules that they set.
I go back to what I have said to others before. Rogers either needs to reduce their plans by upwards of $30 each, making their most inexpensive plan at $30 per month for 150 minutes of talk time, and 400MB of bandwidth, or double all bandwidth on the plans, which would make their heavy user plan for $115 provide users with 4GB of data transfer.
It still wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be much more competitive when compared to what the rest of the world is doing with regard to the iPhone.
I think Canadian consumers should continue to push for fair plans from all cellular providers, but I also think that they should be reasonable in their goals.
John Said,
July 10, 2008 @ 11:24 pm
While I agree that Rogers should adjust their iPhone bundles with better voice portions, I’m wondering what the difference is between unlimited data for $30US from AT&T in the US which is soft capped at 5gb or the $30Cdn for 6gb Rogers is offering. I would think the Rogers deal is better…although it sure took them long enough to present it. I also find it hard to believe that an iPhone customer on Sept 1st (the offer is until Aug 31st) would only have the existing plans to choose from for data ($30/300mb for example) and not the 6gb plan. Most likely the deal will be extended or slightly adjusted once there has been time with iPhone users on the system.
Do people just want to see “Unlimited*” with the asterisk being the cap limit? I guess it’s just psychological. 6gb should be more than enough for even the most die hard Youtube tweener…even at 3G speeds.
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