iPhone in Canada: Rogers lowering data rates

Jan 26, 2008 | Tag: Mobile news 

Since iPhone’s introduction in January 2007, Rogers Wireless has claimed to be bringing the iPhone to Canada — or denying that it is planning to do so, depending on the time of year and the representative you ask.

What is well known is that Rogers is the biggest Canadian GSM mobile carrier, and that so far Apple and Rogers did not seem to have reached a satisfactory for both sides agreement.

Now, according to a supposed leak from Rogers posted on HowardForums, Rogers is planning to introduce some changes to its mobile internet tariffs, possibly in preparations for iPhone’s launch in Canada, but more likely in order to stay competitive.

According to the leak Rogers Wireless will be offering three new data plans. The first one, called Communicate Package would cost $20 per month, and would include unlimited mobile internet access, 2500 SMS messages, and 1000 MMS messages, with such extras as Caller Id, Name Display, and Voicemail.

The other two data plans are the $7 Vision Internet Package, which includes 50 Video Calling minutes and unlimited on-device mobile browsing, and a regular $7 unlimited WAP mobile browsing package (which doesn’t seem to apply to all the devices — only Rogers certified devices will be accepted).

Canadian data plans for a long time remained the most expensive in North America, but due to stiffing competition, it seems the situation is slowly changing for the better — for the consumer. After Telus recently announced its ambitions to support GSM technology, while Bell recently introduced an unlimited mobile internet plan for the HTC Touch at $7/month, the competition in the industry is warming up while the prices are going down.

The Rogers data plans rate change is rumored to take effect on February 5th. However, it has not been officially confirmed by Rogers, and there’s no clear link between the new data plans and iPhone’s launch in Canada, although we’d like to believe otherwise.

Comments:

January 28th, 2008 08:02 Rob said:

iPhone in Canada! It is cool!

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