Wireless data in Canada is ridiculously expensive
December 11, 2005 - 7:20pm — bmann
Mentioning his on the road week at Les Blogs, Paolo Valdemarin reports that 3G access with his phone costs 0,75 eurocent/kb = 7,6 Euros per Mb.
I would happily pay that price, especially for the approximately 300kbps speed of 3G. How much does wireless cost in Canada? Well, only Fido/Rogers have GPRS, while Bell and Telus have the ridiculous 1X no SIM card lock in nonsense. If you don't have a data plan, GPRS costs $30 CDN / MB, or 30 cents/kb. So, uploading one picture from my 1.3MP cameraphone costs about $9. Ridiculous!
Luckily, I have a grandfathered Fido plan that lets me use unlimited data for $50 / month. I try and use it as much as possible to get my moneys worth. Darren earlier reported what happens when you try data without a plan.
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GPRS with FIDO not worthed !
A couple of month ago, we get the latest Qtek 9100 cell phone. We activate GPRS with a basic plan. Well... I wish i had found all this blogs before... A whopping $300 CDN/month. After discussion with FIDO, they couldn't care less about the bill.
1) They won't tell you that you will easily bust your basic transfer quota.
2) Unless you spot the little G (which is a millimeter wide on my screen), there's no easy way to tell wheter you're connected to a Hot Spot or GPRS.
3) GPRS monitor ?? If you don't activate it, it will tell 0$ - 0 bytes...Very misleading! Fido had no idea about this. They said it couldn't be done on the cellular because we didn't buy it from them. They are wrong! It was just a click on a particular tab.
In conclusion , GPRS with FIDO is not worthed. Customer support has no idea about the latest technologies (Pocket Pc 2005). To pay 50$ /month for the unlimited plan with a SLOW connection is completly ridiculous. My HIGH SPEED access for my computer is 40 $/month.
Wake up FIDO !
Maybe not even in Europe
Hey Boris, if you haven't already watched the NerdTV episode with Anina, you really should. This chick is a supermodel in Europe and a part time mobile hacker (the original sense of the word) and has her own mobile-friendly website and blog all about fashion and mobile technology. Right up your alley. Mobile social networking.
At one point she reveals that a friend of hers got a bill for 600 Euro because of her data plan. That's not that cheap.
But overall, the interview is awesome and I think would very much interest you.
Got a Tivo for the parents - nice system, they love it already. Snaged the Volvo Cup sailing race on my dad's wish list - he didn't even know it was on. Now they are both Tivo lovers. 5 days after getting it installed, they've said goodbye to their VCR.
...and Fido/Rogers, Bell and
...and Fido/Rogers, Bell and Telus all want to sell us audio and video files over these networks. One friend spent 15 minutes surfing standard websites on his phone for kicks one day - besides being horribly slow, and being a terrible viewing experience (lack of css mobile support with the majority of sites) - he was dinged about $20.00 in transfer fees, the majority being for images formatted for the desktop web. While the carriers have a long way to go in regards to their networks, web publishers and content providers in general have to start thinking about how to effectively deliver their content to the mobile space given the existing constraints. Also, it'll be interesting to see what happens when devices supporting WiFi/VOIP start appearing that don't have to rely on proprietary CDMA/GPRS/EDGE/etc networks.
Yep
The carriers are having to make up alternative charge plans for things like hiptops etc. that are useless without data, but at the same time don't give us the same access to "plain" IP.
If things continue in this route, WiFi-based access will become wide spread before mobile ever takes off. This is one of the reasons that I want to invest in a mobile device that has WiFi on board, then I'm no longer solely tied to the carrier networks.