iPhone..... I hardly knew ye

Being the technology slut that I am, one can only imagine what's been going through my mind about the second generation 3G iPhone by Apple. I fully intended to buy a first generation iPhone back while I was in the US in June, bring it home, unlock it and use it on my Fido cell phone account. But when I heard the 3G model was coming to Canada on 11 July, I held off and watched for announcements.

By the end of June, Rogers and Fido announced their data plans for the phone. Rogers and Fido are the only GSM network players in Canada - and both part of the same company - Rogers owns Fido. The cheapest plan first announced by these companies costs $60 per month, includes Visual Voicemail, unlimited night and weekend minutes (Rogers nights begin at 9pm), and free access to Rogers and Fido WiFi hotspots. The $60 plan offers only 150 daytime minutes, 75 text SMS messages, and 400MB of data. Rogers calculates that using 400 MB of data is the equivalent of 200,000 text e-mails or 3,100 web pages or 1,360 photo attachments. Pundits argue that 400MB can be used up quite fast if using web pages like Facebook and Google Maps or services like GPS. The most expensive plan costs $115 per month and includes 800 minutes of talk time and 2GB of data. Do you want call display? $15 extra. You must sign a 3 year contract. The phone (8GB model) will cost $199.

Let's do some math. $60.00 for the plan; $0.50 for the 911 Access fee; $6.95 for the System Access fee; $15.00 for Caller ID; $4.13 - GST = $86.57 per month. For 3 years = $3116.52. Plus the cost of buying the phone = $3326.50. No unlimited data plan. You cannot (until sources prove me otherwise) buy your phone outright and avoid a data plan. I have no interest in a data plan if I have to be watching my usage every minute - and data overages on these networks are brutal - $30 if you went 60MB over your limit, $1.80 for every 60MB over that. So you could be looking at $120 cell phone bills if you're not careful. The high end user will pay $144.32 per month (or $5195.61 over 3 years + cost of phone), but that's only a 2GB data cap - easily surpassed in some peoples' opinion.

Meanwhile, in the US, you can get an iPhone with AT&T for $70 per month. That includes 450 daytime minutes NATIONWIDE - that's right, no long distance (even to Canada)! The system access fee is only $1.25, there is no 911 access fee. Any unused minutes can be rolled over to the next month. Calls within the network (AT&T to AT&T) are unlimited. Call display and visual voicemail are included and the best part - unlimited data. Sorry - no free SMS text messages. So $71.25 plus tax per month is pretty sweet for all you get there. Another bonus - the contract is only 2 years.

Why do we as Canadians suffer these brutal, in-your-face rip-offs? Because we don't have any choices. To get an iPhone legally, you're stuck with one company disguised as 2, data plans that seem draconian compared to most other parts of the world, and a government that ensures no competition by disallowing foreign bids on any spare cell frequency bandwidth unless they partner with an existing Canadian company. The CRTC (which regulates all telecommunications in Canada) doesn't seem to have a problem with any of this. It won't take you very long to search the internet and find countless numbers of people frustrated, insulted and gob smacked at the cost of owning an iPhone in Canada. There's even a petition, which as of this writing reached over 63,000 petitioners. The backlash seems to have Rogers doing some backpedaling. Their counter-offer of $30 for 6GB (unconfirmed) of data added to any voice plan is ..... better. Oh, but wait - it's only a limited time offer until September. Even under the new pricing, customers will still be on the hook for a minimum of $2,360 after paying the phone's initial $199 cost and 36 months of service.

Meanwhile, Bell have announced their own data plan for the smart phone they will offer (the Samsung Instinct) at a much more reasonable fare - $10 adds data to your existing plan offering unlimited internet access.

On launch day (11 July 2008), things were even more embarrassing for Rogers. After many people lined up for hours at Rogers outlets, some discovered that the iPhone sold out in a very short while, the higher volume stores having 100 or less of the phones. Some stores were stocked with as few as 40 phones. Worse, some loyal customers were shocked to find out that the first batch of iPhones were only for sale to new customers.

I will not be buying an iPhone. At least not legally. The best I can hope for is that I acquire one from a private sale so that I do not require a plan, unlock the phone and use WiFi when I can instead of our dreadfully expensive data network.