Goodbye(?) iPhone/Rogers monopoly!
This week the Rogers GSM Monopoly was broken in Canada. Bell and Telus having been working over the past months to get their own GSM network up and running, why would they want to run both network types? Enter the iPhone 3G[s], the hot selling phone for which I haven’t seen an advertisement from Rogers on in a long time. It is selling so good that it doesn’t need advertising. Well needless to say myself and many other Canadians having been waiting to see the prices stack up; the results? Not so good.
The Phone
Rogers, Bell and TELUS all have the new 3Gs (16GB and 32GB white/Black) and also the cheap 8GB Black 3G. Looking for the best buy on an on contract iPhone? Bell Has the 32GB at $299.95, 16GB at $199.95, and the 8GB at $99.95. Rogers and TELUS both have prices of 32GB at $299.99, 16GB at $199.99, and the 8GB at $99.99. Rogers also has some 16GB 3G iPhone’s kicking around for $149 if you really can’t afford to go 3Gs.
Off contract prices don’t really mean much seen as all three have the iPhone but in the interest of no terms. Rogers: 32GB 3Gs $780, 16GB 3Gs $680, 16GB 3G $730, 8GB 3G $580. TELUS: 32GB 3Gs $799, 16GB 3Gs $699, 8GB 3G $599. Bell doesn’t seem to be offering their iPhones off contract.
In summary, phone prices essentially don’t matter too much once we start looking at plans, but the best deal would be on Rogers. Why? As nice as the 3Gs is the 3G still is an amazing phone, $149 for a 16GB 3G is the slightly better $99 iPhone with 8GB more for $50. What do I recommend? 32GB 3Gs, once you start paying thousands for this phone on contract you might as well shell out a few extra hundreds and go with the big an new.
Plans
This is where the fun begins. I was hoping to see some better plans at a cheaper monthly rate, and if that wasn’t going to happen it would have seemed a smart bet on some two year contracts showing up. Unfortunately the wonderful Canadian telecoms have let us down once again. All three only offer the iPhone on the glorious 3 year contracts. This basically means that during your 3 year term there will be two new iPhones released (if we are to believe apple is going to keep releasing an iPhone every year). Once again we are screwed over unless we want to pay off contract prices for the new hardware.
Let’s get to comparisons, the general idea for a plan that I was look at was around 400 minutes, 2GB of data, Nationwide five favorite numbers, if possible an unlimited texting plan on top, and visual voicemail.
- Rogers
- TELUS
- Bell
Add-ons
- Rogers
- TELUS
- Bell
To Sum up the monthly bill…
- Rogers
- TELUS
- Bell
Who wins?
This might be better titles as who loses? You, with no two year contracts in sight and voice/data combos not getting cheaper it’s pretty much up in the air. The best 3 year contract goes to TELUS. With a 2GB data plan combined with one of three voice plans, one of which you can drop the texting add-on if you don’t want video/picture messaging.
Conclusion
It’s funny how the older stuff gets it gets worse. Over a year ago when I picked up my iPhone I got a $35 Canada wide ‘My5’ plan, a 6GB/ month data plan and a $15 Visual voicemail + 250 text add-on. What gives telecoms? Honestly the price of data is going to kill you when you look at getting any modern day smart phone. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE CASH, unfortunately as awesome and as main stream as the iPhone is these days it still is a bit of a rich man’s toy. What I hope to see in the future from at least one of the three is a nice two year contract. A great voice plan, say maybe 200 local and 200 long distance minutes? Maybe we throw at least a 4GB plan on top of that, throw in a little visual voice mail and some unlimited picture/video messaging. Then give it to me at around $75/month. I guess we can only hope.
