Rogers gives in on outlandish iPhone pricing … or do they?
Power to the People!
It seems that Rogers Communications Inc. has bowed to public pressure and lowered the price of internet usage on the hotly awaited iPhone, which is being released in Canada on Friday.
The company will now offer a $30-a-month plan that allows customers to use six gigabytes of internet data on the iPhone, on top of voice plans that start at $20 plus a system access fee of $6.95 a month. So that’s a total of $56.95 a month before taxes. It’s a small gesture, but at least it’s an acknowledgment of people’s unhappiness with the original plan.
Rogers’ previous basic plan cost $66.95 and allowed only 400 megabytes of internet usage, the main reason behind many potential consumers’ outrage.
That anger expressed itself in a number of anti-Rogers websites, including ruinediphone.com — which had more than 56,000 people petition against the company — and cancelrogers.com.
The 6GB plan is the largest Rogers offers and should be more than enough for what most people want to do with the iPhone. Many websites now clock in around 1MB per page while a five-minute streaming video can use up to 80MB of data. The original plan would have burned through those limits quickly.
Rogers was bearing a lot of heat for the length of the required contract on the iPhone, which at three years is the longest in the world. Even under the new pricing, consumers 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.
Personally though, I’m still NOT going to get one.
