10,000 Canadians petition for iPhone rate relief
June 29, 2008
FORTUNE: Apple 2.0 10,000 Canadians petition for iPhone rate relief «
It’s taken more than a year for the iPhone to make its way across the world’s longest undefended border, which may help explain why so many Canadians are upset this weekend.
On Friday, Rogers Communications (RCI) — Canada’s largest mobile carrier and the only one with a contract to sell Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone north of that border — announced the details of its voice and data plans. They struck some would-be customers as unreasonably high and unnecessarily restrictive, especially when compared with those in the U.S. and the U.K., and thousands of angry Canadians have made their feelings known in various homegrown websites, including eh Mac,GeekCulture, and blog.r4nt,.
But the largest and most pungent protest is a petition whose original name was unprintable, but which can now be found at ruinediphone.com. Its stated goal is to gather 10,000 names — accompanied by to a letter to Steve Jobs — by July 11, the date when the iPhone 3G goes on sale in Canada. By Sunday morning it had already gathered more than 10,400.
Rogers totally mucked it up. The best part is how they include voicemail but force you to add the $15 value pack filled with useless crap just to get caller ID. What’s also great is the unlimited access to Rogers/Fido wifi hotspots… that is until you realize there are only two hotspots in Vancouver.
BTW, the Fido iPhone plans are a tad better because evenings start at 7pm and they bill by the second.
Update:
Globe and Mail article – 16,000+ names and growing fast
Update x2:
Think Rogers iPhone plans are unfair? Try living in Sweden
Just my luck! Though I should point out that they actually have an unlimited data plan for $33 in Sweden, which is what the big fuss is about. If you consistently go over your alloted data on Rogers (not very hard on 3G), it will easily cost much more than Telia’s plan. Oh, and Telia allows you to use their cheaper non-iPhone plans as well, unlike Rogers.
This is ridiculous!
What is with the rage with iPhone Plans in Canada? sure, by comparisons it’s such a rip-off compared to other countries such as The United States and The UK.
Where’s the rage and protest against such ridiculous data plan with the Blackberries in Canada?
Canadian Tel-Co has been charging their customers to the mitochondria well before the iPhone 3G announcement.
ruinediphone.com is so disingenuous. If the Canadian wants to protest, then protest the source that is the ridiculously expensive wireless data plan.
It seems that the whole ruinediphone.com and others alike are great PR move for other handset manufacturers.
If you don’t like the iPhone 3G plan in Canada, then get the Canada’s own Blackberry Plan. Wait a minute, it’s not any better. It is worse!
All in all, it is Rogers and other Canadian Tel-Co that need to be protested.
You can make a difference by protesting the Tel-Co. It has nothing to do with the iPhone at all.
The site was actually originally named http://www.fuckyourogers.com (the domain still works if you care to try). It was quickly changed for obvious reasons.
There has always been a lot of rage against the data plans in Canada. Our rates trail behind all the first world nations and most third world countries. It’s absolutely ridiculous how they’ve gotten away with it for so long.
I suppose the introduction of the iPhone was especially important in the fight against Roger’s absurd data rates because Apple had been encouraging all the telcos that offered the phone to create a special data-centric plan which often included unlimited data. Apple openly encourages users to stream YouTube videos, browse through the web using a desktop quality browser, download music through the iTunes store, email photos, download applications from the upcoming AppStore, etc. This is all very data intensive and no phone has ever taken advantage of EDGE or 3G like the iPhone does. With its introduction in Canada, it was almost expected that Rogers would finally offer a decent data plan to match. That didn’t happen.
The Blackberry is an unfair comparison because you can’t do the same data intensive stuff. Reading text email and going on optimized text based sites doesn’t nearly take up as much data. Not only that, if you’re a Blackberry user, you’ll know that data is highly compressed. 25MB worth of data on the Blackberry would be comparable to 200MB on a normal phone. You cannot just compare the absolute amount of data included in the plan, it’s about usage. But most importantly, Blackberries are mostly used by enterprise users in which the company pays for the plan, not the individual and so they care very little about the actual cost of the plan.
Out of all the telcos in Canada, Rogers is the worst when it comes to data. Telus and Bell both offer unlimited data plans at very reasonable prices. Bell has highspeed unlimited data for $30/month and $7 for the HTC Touch. A lot of consumers are furious that Rogers couldn’t even match that on the much more expensive iPhone plan. Unfortunately, Rogers is the only GSM carrier (thanks to the Canadian government who allowed them to buy Fido), so they are the only ones who can offer the iPhone.
It seems one of the only ways to get the message across to Rogers is through Apple. If enough attention is given to this site, then perhaps Apple will renegotiate with Rogers for a better data plan in fear of lackluster sales. Any new changes will most likely be reflected on the data rates for their other phones.
So really, it has a lot to do with the iPhone. Without it, our data rates would be even worse.
I smell an antitrust/competition act lawsuit coming.