Rogers sets fire to the iPhone, HTC and Telus to the rescue

If you haven’t heard about the ridiculous iPhone prices for Canada coming from wireless communications company Rogers (Rogers Communications), then be prepared to take out a second mortgage.Rogers released the plans on June 27^th with an announcement from Sylvain Roy, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Fido (Rogers’ sister wireless telecom company, which will also be selling the iPhone in Canada with the same outrageous plans).

Plans go as follows:  

•  - $60/month. 150 minutes + unlimited evenings/weekends, 400 MB Data, 75 SMS sent, unlimited incoming SMS
• - $75/month. 300 minutes + unlimited evenings/weekends, 750 MB Data, 100 SMS sent, unlimited incoming SMS
• - $100/month. 600 minutes + unlimited evenings/weekends, 1 GB Data, 200 SMS sent, unlimited incoming SMS
• - $115/month. 800 minutes + unlimited evenings/weekends, 2 GB Data, 300 SMS sent, unlimited incoming SMS

 At first, these plans seem somewhat reasonable for Canadians, but what about caller ID? Well, that’s where the extra $15 - $20 comes in: A $15 monthly value pack will get you Call Display, WhoCalled, Caller Ring Trax, 2,500 Sent Text Messages and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes. While the $20 plan gives you the same value as the $15 one with 10,000 Sent Text Messages, Fido Evenings starting at 5:00 p.m. and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes. They were also nice enough to give us the “suggestive” data usage for 400 MB: up to 200,000 text emails or 3,100 web pages or 1,360 photo attachments. Roy stated, “As the wireless provider voted number one in wireless satisfaction, Fido is thrilled to offer a variety of well-priced voice and data plans making iPhone 3G accessible to as many of our customers as possible. “Well sorry Sylvain, it looks like that “number one wireless satisfaction” is a little bit passé. When the news broke to the Internet, it spawned masses of Rogers hate sites in protest of the rates. One of these newly popular sites is RuinediPhone.com (formerly F*ckYouRogers.com), which has received over 54,000 signatures from the time the rates were released. Here’s the website’s message to Rogers, Fido and to every Canadian: “Everyone would like to say ‘NO THANKS’ to Rogers/Fido for screwing our iPhone Canadian dream with poor data/voice plans. If you consider these plans not suitable, please sign this petition. On July 11th 2008, we will send a printed copy of all these messages to Rogers HQ to demonstrate our indignation toward them. We would like to say ‘Thank You, You’ for signing this petition and helping the iPhone cause in Canada.” The site has been drawing attention from across the world, and that seems to be a big problem, seeing that anyone can sign the petition, regardless if they aren’t even from Canada, and are not being affected. People have also filed complaints with the online version of the Canadian Competition Bureau at competitionbureau.gc.ca stating that the Rogers iPhone rates are absurd and should be changed to fit Canadian budgets.On July 3^rd, Telus was the first to announce (in North America) the HTC Touch Diamond for Canadians, available in the late summer months. It will be available for $149.99 CAN with a 3 year contract. The data plans range from $15 for email and instant messaging to $30 for IM, unlimited email and unlimited web browsing. I was personally going to buy an iPhone when Steve Jobs first announced its availability for Canada at the 2008 WWDC in San Francisco. To my displeasure, Rogers let me down. Rogers has to learn that they should not only compete with Canadian wireless providers but also other carriers in North America which offer higher data usage plans with a lower monthly service fee. Up until today, I was going to buy the HTC Touch Vogue on the Bell Canada network, but I think I will look at the possibility of picking up the HTC Touch Diamond when it is released later this summer for Canadians via Telus. But we can still wait out the storm and see what Rogers will do to appease the ever-lowering number of possible iPhone customers in the Great White North.