An article in the Vancouver Sun talks about out what I’ve known since we moved here: Cell phone rates, particularly for data, are unbelievably expensive here, so an iPhone would cost $100 a month just for the data portion (not the talk portion), and it wouldn’t even be for unlimited data!
Apple is not going to do a deal with a carrier with that high a price tag because almost no one would buy it and they would look elitist (not to mention, users would be unwilling to use the web browser for fear of running up a higher data bill). Unless there is some real arm-twisting, the iPhone won’t be here for a couple of years.
Just to see if I could find out anything more, I called up Rogers, who is my cell phone provider. Back in April, another blogger called them and they told him:
Rogers will be carrying the iPhone and will actually function as the exclusive Apple iPhone carrier for the nation of Canada.
This time, the rep I got (after what felt like an interminable series of robots) said the party line was ‘no information is available about the iPhone’, and I told her that she might want to pass on that this article had appeared today, which would sour a lot of customers.
I’m not Jonesing for an iPhone, but I have to admit, the nearly daily crashes of my Treo 650 are getting old pretty quickly. Not to mention how dorky I look every time I head out of the house with my brick of Treo on the left side of my belt and my iPod on the right.
LOVE that image!
and no iPhones here for a while?
crocodile tears running down my cheek.
There’s an online petition circulating: http://www.petitiononline.com/iPhone99/petition.html
imploring Rogers to align data rates for their Cdn customers, with rates for AT&T’s (major shareholder’s) customers in the states.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a cel phone service we could all actually like?
Can we have a photo of “DorkyDave” heading out of the house all techno-loaded?!?!?
I’m sure Pam wouldn’t mind taking the pic … 🙂
oh, and why do your images not show up when i look at the individual articles?
Thanks for the tip on the image, Isabella — I’ve adjusted the URL. It was a mistake to code it the way I did at first. (I used to host images with my old server back in Boston. Am slowly migrating to the new ones hosting the blog itself.) As for the image, every once in a while I feel like I need some of those, just to keep the blog from looking dull. Which reminds me that I want to do another update to the banner.
Thanks also for the petition, Nancy. I’ve signed it.
Bob — I’m not sure I’ve got a photo, but if you insist, I’ll have Pam take one the next time I head out for work some morning. DorkyDave…(*sigh*)
Hey, now you know the only reason I dubbed you that was because of your description.
You’ll always be “DaringDave” to me .…
Yeah, data transfer over Canadian cell networks is ridiculous if you don’t have a cheap grandfathered contract. Probably explains why I’m happy with a very capable ‘dumb’ phone that does Bluetooth — for what I need to exchange with the phone(phone recordings, the odd photo, contact lists), it’s a workable kludge.
I’ve been paying more attention to the OpenMoko project lately. Part of this is because it provides what looks to be a capable phone (and the screen resolution — 283 ppi fergosshakes) and open platform that I can tweak to my needs. The other reason is that the ‘consumer’ version of the Neo 1973 phone, complete with WiFi, should work on my existing provider and be available long before Apple decides to grace us Canucks with the iPhone.
Hi Ian! The OpenMoko project does look cool, but don’t think that it will be as elegant nor have those cool motion sensors and touch screen (that senses more than one touch for certain gestures) that the iPhone has. Not to mention the User Interface. Although Open Source is often a bargain and is great for servers and other software, I never liked any of the desktops or other ‘user-facing’ pieces of it, Even Adium, which is a nice open source chat client for the Mac, is a bit homely.
BTW, nice to see your byline in the paper the other day. Hope the controversies (and reader mail) is endearing you to them.