Rogers Communications (Canada’s GSM cell carrier) has announced a new wrieless essentials package that you cna add on to your cell plan. Some past plans included $5 for 5MB of data; but today they unleashed a new plan “Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan“.
The details of the plan are as follows, direct form the Rogers website:
- Unlimited on-device mobile Internet access to your favourite social communities like Facebook & MySpace, news, sports and entertainment sites all on the go for one flat monthly fee!
- Access to search the mobile Internet with Yahoo! Search and Google, plus access sites like Yahoo! Canada, Canada.com, Windows Live, The Weather Network, Lavalife Mobile and more!
- Protection against high pay-per-use data charges while surfing the mobile Internet and using community-based services like Facebook.
This is, of course, great news for Canadians. This means surfing sites liek facebook can be done form mobile devices for relatively low costs compared to what we used to pay. We are also now one step closer to having a data plan in Canada that would suitable for the iPhone.
The main problem with this new plan, which only costs $7.00/month, is this:
“PDA devices such as a Blackberry or Windows Mobile phones, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible for this plan.”
This means that plan is effectively useless, because all of the phones that are good for internet browsing can’t be used with this plan. At best we can view this as one step closer to lower data rates in Canada and a giant leap towards getting the iPhone in Canada.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Wow…. way to get my hopes up…… and then add a link at the bottom to read the last few paragraphs…… very disapointing
February 13th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
LOL- sorry bud. Telus has a similar plan too which really pisses me off as well. With their version of wireless essentials (SPARK) they have an unlimited data/e-mail/instant messenger plan for like $10. BUT it doesn’t work on blackberies, palms, windows mobile devices etc… which effectively renders it useless; unless you like browsing on 3cmx3cm scree, on a slow phone with no keyboard etc. Keep your eye out for specials though… telus had big typo a while back where they accidentally advertised the unlimited data plan with a PDA phone (and I called them on it). I ended up talking with someone very high-up at Telus about it (but this is a whole other story….)
March 14th, 2008 at 2:15 am
I’m pretty sure that an iPhone user that has Rogers could use this plan. Why does rogers need to know you have an iPhone? They’ll just think you use the phone that you bought from them. In my case a Sony Ericsson w810i. I’m getting an iPhone soon and i plan to use the new unlimited browsing plan. i’ll just pop my sim into my old phone (or a friends with the same phone) if i need to take it to Rogers for any reason.
March 14th, 2008 at 2:17 am
…or would they know??
April 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Well, the Canadian providers will have to smarten up very quick or nobody will by the iPhone if you are going to get “robbed” by crazy monthly data plans. It’s like buying a Hummer with the gas at 1.40/litre. Doesn’t matter if they give you the iPhone, if it costs you more to in data fees to operate it……might as well get a Blackberry like my friends did, eventhough they would rather have an iPhone.
They should look at the plans available in Europe.
Hopefully, this is maybe why it is taking so much time for the iPhone to show up in Canada. Lets keep hoping that Rogers or Fido will provide a plan that makes sense for normal usage.
May 8th, 2008 at 9:25 am
Just the other day I emailed Rogers about adding this to my phone on top of my WinMo Plan. This is bull!! I use Google Maps with GPS on my phone and it uses up data very quickly. Looks like if I want more data I would have to pay $10 for an additional 2MB. Before I upgraded my phone I was getting 5MB for $5.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I feel your pain. I used to use a palm treo and was able to use the 5MB for 5$, and now that I’m using a BB Curve I can’t do this. At least I get the unlimited e-mail for $15/month which isn’t bad… but I wish I could get data for mobile browsing.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
You guys are all fuckin idiots buying into these companies. Never needed a cell phone in the past and I don’t need one now. Nobody needs one. Congratulations Ted for making people believe they need a cell phone. If I were Ted Rogers, I would be charge double knowing that you guys will buy them anyways. Smart man, I applaud him for ripping you guys off. Get’em Ted, get’em. You got my support.