Is Rogers the best choice for a Canadian iPhone?
Firstly, we all know that a carrier with a GSM network is a prerequisite. That already narrowed the choice of carriers down from “a few” to “a couple”. The only two GSM carriers in Canada are Rogers and Fido, and monthly fees paid to either company end up in the same pocket.
Rogers offers several advantages- they have the larger network of the two GSM providers in Canada and their data rates have been dropping consistently.
Fido subscribers have access to Rogers’ towers, but they get hit with extra fees when they “roam” off the smaller Fido network and onto the surrounding Rogers network. This is not an attractive situation for the company blessed with carrying the JebusPhone.
Whether lowering their data rates was part of preparing for iPhone and its traditional bundling with unlimited data plans, or just an effort to seem a more attractive partner to Apple, we can’t say for sure, but it definitely a big step in getting Canadian data rates in line with the rest of the world’s. As of right now, Rogers’ “Blackberry Voice and Email” plans subscribers can add a $7/month unlimited (on-device) mobile browsing option. We can surely expect to have a similar option included in any iPhone service plan. Adding unlimited browsing to the least expensive Blackberry plan gives a total monthly fee $52, before taxes and the ever-popular SAF, and that’s not too far away from the advertised rates in the U.S.
One of the downsides of having to sign up with Rogers for a service plan are that calls are billed by the minute, unlike Fido’s per-second billing. Strange that one arm of the company has per-second billing while the other chooses to bill its customers by the minute.
Another small detail that could stand in the way of a reasonably affordable plan is that the “unlimited” mobile browsing actually has a lot of limitations. This option does not include tethered internet use, non-approved sites, or accessing approved sites using non-approved software. Sure seems like a lot of limitations for and unlimited option.
It looks like Canadians are finally going to be able to walk out of our few Apple stores with some multi-touch goodness- high data rates, per-minute billing, and all- pretty soon. We’re hoping that some of the drawbacks are turned into advantages by that time.
Any other upsides or downsides we couldn’t think of? Let us know in the comments.
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