Slashdot Mirror

There's no such thing as unlimited media streaming, and prices are usually $30/gigabyte at best for prepaid.
See for yourself. Here are comanies that offer full nation-wide coverage (not just small urban areas). Make sure you check the prices for additional data.

Telus, Bell, Rogers, Virgin, Koodo.

Interesting, but Telus still charges $35: http://www.telus.com/en/qc/get...
Bell also charges (no specified amount): http://support.bell.ca/Billing...
Rogers charges $50: http://redboard.rogers.com/201...

It seems that C-343 hasn't been accepted yet. http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInf...

Yes, its the same idea as cell phone usage. You get a certain up/down speed and a bandwidth cap. Based on the pricing, the GP is likely talking about Teksavvy who leases their cable and DSL lines from either Rogers and Bell.

Here is an example of Rogers pricing: http://www.rogers.com/web/link...

Nope. I'm not in the US, but up here in Canada they do the subsidizing as well. Plans typically start at $70 and my current carrier (Rogers) has right on their Phone Plan page:

"Bring your own smartphone and save $20/month on the primary line."

So all the plans include the subsidy and always have, until very recently where you can get the subsidy removed when you have your own device. When I tried to BYOD two years ago there were no discount. I guess they've waken up.

Sure, but even in that statement they aren't saying they bought a phone. They are saying they bought a contract and got a phone for free. I would be really interested to see evidence to the contrary but I'm pretty sure that people understand that the reason they are being offered the phone for free it because the carrier is making money off of the contract.

http://www.rogers.com/web/content/flextab?cm_mmc=Redirects-_-Consumer_Wireless_Eng-_-Devices-_-Flextab - that is a page from one of the Canadian carriers which I think spells things out pretty clearly.

The parent AC is mostly incorrect. The major telecoms only emphasise post-paid plans, but do have pre-paid available without the need to purchase a phone. They don't want to sell them to you however, and will only tell you about pre-paid if you visit their website or ask them specifically.

In Canada there a dozen or so MVNO's, most of whom operate on a pre-paid model in addition to the 'big three' incumbent companies. Each of the 'big three' providers (Rogers, Bell, Telus) owns one or two MVNO's. Rogers has Fido and Chatr, Bell has Virgin and Telus has Koodo. There are also several highly regional carriers (SaskTel, MTS, Lynx, TBayTel, ICE Wireless, etc.) that offer services where the 'Big 3' do not operate (Northern Quebec, Northwest Territories, Northern Ontario, etc.).

All that being said, there is only one major GSM network, the Rogers/Fido network. Thus, (until 2008/2009) only Rogers/Fido were offering pre-paid plans you could use with a GSM phone. Telus and Bell were CDMA. In the last few years Telus and Bell have built their own HSPA+ network. Now that they have a network that takes SIM cards, all three of the major players are offering inexpensive pre-paid SIM cards, with fairly expensive per-minute rates (40c/minute, unless you get a pre-paid 'plan'. Some of the plans are even 'free' if you top up frequently enough).

Further muddying the waters is the fact that most of the MVNOs don't specialise in pre-paid 'long distance' rates or pre-paid 'local' rates. Part of this is because of foreign ownership restrictions. These have been recently eased, but are still tighter than most other countries. Canada is also extremely large, with a small population. Canada is the size of Europe, with 10x fewer people. England, is approximately the same size as Southern Ontario (130,000km^2), but England has 50,000,000 people and Southern Ontario has 12,000,000. Let us not forget that a large part is because the owners of the networks don't want to give anyone a better deal than they give their own customers, at least not appreciably.

All that being said, the 'big three' all offer prepaid SIMs for $10-$20 dollars, so do most of their sub brands. The MVNOs Petro-Canada Mobility and 7-11 'Speak out' wireless are reasonably easy to find and offer prepaid services depending on where you are visiting.

Rogers Wireless - http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/plans#,Tabset1--4
Telus Mobility - http://www.telusmobility.com/en/ON/prepaid/rate-plans.shtml
Bell Mobility - http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Prepaid_plans

Big three 'sub brands' (frequently with regional restrictions ie: major cities):
Virgin Mobile - Bell Mobility - http://www.virginmobile.ca/en/plans/prepaid-talktext-plans.html?itcid=NAV:58
Koodo - Telus Mobility - http://koodomobile.com/en/on/plansandboosters.shtml
Fido - Rogers Wireless - http://www.fido.ca/web/page/portal/Fido/PrepaidPlans?forwardTo=prepaidPlans
Chatr - Rogers Wireless - http://www.chatrwireless.com/web/chatr.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PlanBrowse

Regional Operators:
Sasktel - http://www.sasktel.com/personal/mobility/prepaid/index.html
MTS - http://www.mts.ca/mts/personal/wireless/mts+prepaid+wireless ... etc.

Independent MVNOs:
Petro Canada Mobility - (Rogers Network) -

http://www.rogers.com/web/link/hispeedBrowseFlowDefaultPlans

"Up to 150 Mbps download speed available in select areas
Up to 10 Mbps upload speed available in select areas
250 GB monthly usage allowance
9 Emails and a suite of options

$122.99 per month"

(Note: this indeed appears to be for regular (wired) internet access, not mobile broadband)

So yes, it would probably take longer than 24 hours to use this up, but a 250gb limit is ridiculous for your fastest and most expensive package. In the UK, ISPs such as Sky or BT provide unthrottled access for c. £25 + £15 line rental per month; you can easily download more than 250gb using one of those puny 20Mbit ADSL connections (which in reality probably means

It's not water or oxygen, but it does enable a lot of cool things, and there's no reason for it to be so expensive compared to other Western nations.

Since you're on rogers: http://www.rogers.com/web/content/iphone4s
I suggest:
Prowl: For push notifications. It's free and you will find the perl script handy. There are some powershell ones floating around somewhere too. http://www.prowlapp.com/
Prompt: CLI. If you jailbreak (highly recommended) you can ssh to localhost, it's better than any Terminal app in cydia. http://itun.es/i624Jj
There are others but I never use them. My coworker and i opted for a home brewed app that handled a lot of our needs by phone in the event we had to be called about something off-hours.

Hell, the public knows it's something about display technology because the term AMOLED has been plastered all over the place.

Bullshit.

That is all.

I went to a cellphone provider's webiste and looked at their phones. Like this one. Of which "AMOLED" is plastered on at least 6 phones.

It's a technology, and it's a marketing spec plastered all over the place. I just saw an ad for some Samsung Android phone, and it claimed a Super AMOLED screen. A radio ad for the Galaxy Nexus (heard of that phone? It came with Ice Cream Sandwich since day 1) praises its AMOLED HD screen.

The only way you might not know about it is if you lock yourself in the basement, never step outside (oh look, a billboard for an Android phone with AMOLED screen!), use any media like radio, TV, or step inside any store or mall (thus skipping all the cellphone displays), it's plastered everywhere I go.

Hell, the term is so popular, I bet some of the very same will mistakenly say the iPhone or iPad has an AMOLED screen.

Sure, they won't know what makes it special or advanced, but they know what it is.

Only, it's not the first of its kind.

http://www.rogers.com/web/content/dataSharing?setLanguage=en&setProvince=ON

Just off the top of my head. They were flogging that as a great new feature a year ago. Not that I would ever buy from that particular company, I think they're evil incarnate. But they did offer data sharing a long time ago. Putting it on an "unlimited" data plan is new, but the main reason Rogers doesn't do that is that they don't have unlimited data plans. I imagine that if they did have unlimited data plans in the first place, they'd offer it too... probably for a price that's just as obscenely out to lunch as the one that's discussed in TFA: for what Rogers would charge to share 3GB of data and 200 minutes between two phones, you can get two unlimited everything phones from Wind... unlimited data, unlimited minutes, unlimited texting, and unlimited long distance.

Similarly, I doubt very much that the companies TFA is discussing will be particularly friendly with their pricing....

As a Rogers customer myself I can guarentee you don't have close to the cap you stated, which turns out to be true as you would only get 12Mb/512Kb plan with a 60GB cap for $46.99 plus taxes and modem rental fee (as per the text below the price).

Rogers has spent more time telling me their network sending reset packets downpipe is all my imagination and even their modems have 2 radios which brodcast your wifi signal as well as a "ghost SSID". I detected 2 SSID's wich had exactly the same signal and sequential MAC addresses. I call Rogers and they straight out tell me I'm lying. Since then all I can do is think about ditching them. SSL connections are flakey and their connections go down for some reason for 30 mins every morning at around 6am. Well the list goes on.

Just out of curiosity if anyone else here has a Rogers modem and has the ability to check for WIFI APs see if you can find a hidden network with WPA2 flags with a sequential MAC to your regular AP SSID. If you do find this please reply to this thread with any info you care to provide.

There is a setting that lets you change this so that you only have to press the guide button once to get to the guide. Link

Canada is getting this way, at least with the large providers. I think Bell tops out at 75 gigs/month on a Fibe 25 connection (25mbit/sec down, 7mbit/sec up). I think you can eat that up in a single standard work shift.

Of course, I've had a connection with them solidly since 1998, and my grandfathered plan is an actual unlimited data plan, but that means I can't upgrade to a Fibe25 connection (without paying a lot of money for their "data insurance", which is still less than unlimited even if you buy it three times) as I'd have to cancel the old contract.

Bell Fibe 25 pricing
Rogers pricing
(Rogers "Extreme" internet is similar to Fibe 25, although upload speeds are 1/7th as fast..)

Almost all McDonalds restaurants in Canada now have free Wi-Fi and many other coffee shops, etc. do as well. http://www.mcdonalds.ca/en/news/releases/release_May-18-2011.aspx Before you buy a SIM/sign up for a plan, check out the big three's web sites for their coverage maps (just search for coverage map or give them a call). I have a feeling your remote island may have extremely limited access. Our cell telcos state they cover 90+% of the population but that's because most Canadians live in lage urban areas or near the USA border. http://www.telusmobility.com/ http://www.bellmobility.com/home/ http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=WRLS_HOME

The options are not pretty, Canada having some of the most monopolistic mobile carriers in the G20.

Having said that, you should consider the following:

- CDMA is out, since I don't think it would work with another carrier. CDMA works only with Bell and Telus. So Rogers, Fido and the rest are out.

- Is the area you are in within mobile range of certain carriers? It may not be. So check with locals there. There used to be a map of all Canada with all the cell towers and all carriers somewhere. I forgot the URL though. Google may help.

- Is your iPad locked to a certain carrier or not? If it is locked, you need to unlock it before a SIM from a different provider

- Rogers Pay As You Go gives you 7 day access for $7, and 125MB. You will need a SIM, which is I think, $35, then you need to put some money in the account, say $25 or so.Since 125MB will not be enough, you will need several of these $7. The way it works is that you set the APN in your phone/device to Rogers', and then try to browse. A text message will be sent to you with a URL. You click that, and it will give you a choice of $2 for 1 day and 10MB, or $7 for a week, and 125MB. You click on the link, the money is deducted from your balance, and you are done. Check here for more info: Rogers Pay As You Go.

I have an article on my site for using Android Smartphones with Rogers Pay As You Go. The APN info may help with your iOS setup.

By the way, Rogers is my regular users, and Pay As You Go is my regular plan. I am using Rogers Pay As You Go this week in a not so remote place. That $7 has lasted me from Friday to Monday, but I have not uploaded photos on it. There is WiFi walking distance from here, and I use that for photo uploads.

It's not just BitTorrent, its all encrypted traffic aswell.

If anyone in my house connects to a work VPN my ping in WoW skyrockets and eventually I get disconnected. If I log off the VPN the problem goes away. This happens everytime and is 100% reproducible. I don't even have to do anything with that VPN connection, it just has to be established and idling and WoW will be effected to the point where I lag out and get disconnected.

This issue has been known for a while. Here's a 32 page thread on Roger's community forums: http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/forums/forumtopicpage/board-id/Getting_connected/thread-id/557/page/1. That thread was started on January 17th 2011, so Rogers has known about the issue for a while. The fact that they refuse to fix the issue is ridiculous and unacceptable.

The problem isn't just limited to WoW, it's all traffic. If I torrent anything or connect to a VPN *ALL* traffic is delayed to the point where I can't even connect to a website without timing out. My entire connection gets clobbered. This has been going on for over 2 years. The issue with WoW is more recent, most likely starting with the release of Cataclysm.

I'm glad Rogers is finally getting some much needed bad publicity. This is why I believe we need strong government regulation. I have zero faith in the Canadian government or the CTRC though, so I won't hold my breath.

They do it in Canada, too. $0.15 per incoming text, with most carriers. You pay extra to add text packages.

It's not *quite* as bad as that, though... most voicemail/call display packages include a small number of text messages. 100/month is more than enough texts to cover accidental texts, and messages from people who don't realize you pay for texts. Upgrading from the entry-level plan to the next step up gets you 1000 texts/month, which is more than enough for most users. Additionally, most non-entry level plans will get you included texts as well.

With some carriers, about $50-$75/mo will get you unlimited north american long distance with unlimited data. With the big providers, that'll cost you about $125/mo at a minimum (unless you threaten to cancel... Rogers lowered my bill to $75/mo when I threatened to go to Wind... :P that gets me 400 anytime minutes, unlimited evenings/weekends from 6pm-7am, 500mb data, unlimited north american LD, texting, call display, call waiting, voicemail, etc., and better coverage than I'd get with the smaller players... important, because I live in the sticks.)

Mobile service is still disgustingly overpriced in NA when you compare it to what's available in Europe and Asia, but from what I understand, it's much worse in the USA. :(

No, as I stated in many location in europe, you can cover many countries with a single tower, where as in North america you can cover a single city.

(I did sound a little hazy there, it was late! I'm sorry! :P)

and FYI: the dominant GSM carrier in Canada (Rogers) maintains very few towers. you ever see a GSM coverage map of north america? http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless_network

see that band covering all of 9% of canada? that's it. we have a few other providers that provide CDMA coverage across ~50% of SK/MB/ON but none of them will handshake off GSM handsets. at any given time, (Even in some major cities!) you seriously may be on one single tower, with the rest of the entire town.

I did the math somewhere in this comment thread:

to cover 100% of the area in germany, would require ~58 towers. (~357KM^2 total area / 6100KM^2 single cell size@750W/sector = ~58) assuming population maintains the current density of 248 people/KM^2 20% of north america, (which ABOUT covers the MAJOR population centers), would require 809 towers.

I'm not saying that putting up ONE tower SHOULD cover such a huge area, but if you push a BTS to 1.8KW/sector, you get a cell 90KM in diameter. (and SHITTY battery life as each handset needs to use the 2W 850MHz band to ever reach the tower) yielding 20,000KM^2 bubbles. for ~$450K installed and less than $50K a year in maintenance, a "startup" in Europe can place the tower within range of a major city (like greater london) and blanket the surrounding area: yielding as many as 16 million potential customers. if you get 5%, that's 800K people: at a $10/month plan with shitty limits, that's $8 Mil a month in revenue. (yes, 800,000 people sharing one cell that's only build to handle ~250/min will suck. but for $10 a month, who cares! :P)

here in north america, people travel a much greater distance just to go home. if you don't cover their work AND home, you have no chance to sell that consumer. meaning that carriers constantly push old technology to it's limits to cover their customers geographical restrictions. it's not unusual here to find that 5-10% of the employees in a larger origination will travel much more than 75KM just to get TO work. you know how large a cell that would take to cover?

Canada:
http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=WLRS_Plans&category=data
Australia:
http://broadbandguide.com.au/bigpond

America (wireless):
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=plans
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp?rel=nofollow&wtSlotClick=1-003J13!CISM01-1-1

I knew these off the top of my head. You've never heard of these plans?

Australia:
http://broadbandguide.com.au/bigpond
Canada:
http://www.rogers.com/web/Rogers.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=WLRS_Plans&category=data

America (wireless):
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobilebroadband/?page=plans
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/data-plans.jsp?rel=nofollow&wtSlotClick=1-003J13!CISM01-1-1

I think your problem is that you are using the packaging setup for residential services.

Now if you use the Small Business packages you will find it to be much more for your money.

I know Cogeco does charge residential overage but absolutely does not charge extra for business overage.

Customer service tends to be friendlier when you are a "Business" as well. They also don't verify that you are a business so it's simply a matter of choosing that package.

http://your.rogers.com/business/productsservices/internetservices/access/businessinternetaccess.asp
http://www.cogeco.ca/cable/on/en/business/internet/forfaits.html
Compare them yourself and you will shake your head at why somebody would pay for the residential package.

I don't think it's that bad, actually, because they offer different plans. If all you're planning on doing is watching a few youtube videos and checking email, why should you pay the same as someone who is using their internet connection to watch movies every night? You shouldn't, it's not fair, and this plan is marketed at those who are low-internet users (this should be obvious). If you need more than 15GB, it is not a problem, just move up to the next plan.

If you look at their plans, you can see that they offer a range of plans. Decide how much you need in a month, and choose the right plan for yourself. If you choose a lower plan and go over every month, then you are just stupid. The $4 per GB everyone is complaining about is an overage charge, not a bandwidth charge. It's because you said you were going to stay in a certain range, and got a good deal because of it, then didn't stay in the range you said you would. If you're going over the limit regularly, just move up to the next level. It's not like they are charging $4 for every GB.

Now, the prices in general might be a little higher than around here, but the internet speeds are a lot higher than around here too. So I think it would be hard to accuse them of price gouging. If someone knows what their actual costs are and can show that they are ripping people off, it would be interesting to hear, but don't start whining just because you don't like someone charging you money. Their prices aren't that high.

I am a Rogers customer. I like the speed and latency (Express plan), but hate the bandwidth cap. Normally, I don't go over it, but occasionally do so.

Here is a matrix of their plans.

Two plans changed for new clients signing up after July 21: Lite and Extreme. Lite is what the summary describes. Extreme was 95GB for $60 a month, now it is 80GB.

They want to make money in two ways: via their own video service, and by charging extra for bandwidth that people will use for Netflix.

However, sending them the notification is an offer to contract. They accept the terms under the contract by performing the specific actions laid out in the contract which can only be done on my site (so it's not like sending a contract that says 'if the sun rises tomorrow, you agree to pay me money.).

To demonstrate there was a contract, you would need to show that there was consideration and acceptance on their part. You would be unable to demonstrate that (1) Yahoo's crawler is able to comprehend and consider what is being offered, (2) that the crawler's continued operation on your site constitutes acceptance of a contract, and (3) that Yahoo's crawler is an authorized agent of Yahoo Inc.

Under a consent agreement last year, Facebook only has 2 more months to get their act straight or get the plug pulled in Canada.

Irrelevant -- that was for violations of PIPEDA, not because of any T&C listed in a contract.

There's a reason "negative option" (aka opt-out) contracts have been banned for federally-regulated goods and services across Canada, and that the majority of Canadians also enjoy protection against it for all other goods and services - it's misleading to the point of fraud.

Bzzt... try again. http://your.rogers.com/about/legaldisclaimer/TOS_Eng.pdf

"Unless otherwise specified in the Service Agreement, we may change, at any time, any charges, features, content, programming, structure or any other aspects of the Services, as well as any term or provision of the Service Agreement, upon notice to you. If you do not accept a change to the Services, your sole remedy is to terminate the Service Agreement and the Services provided under the Service Agreement, within 30 days of your receipt of our notice of change to the Services (unless we specify a different notice period), by providing us with advance notice of termination pursuant to Section 31. If you do not accept a change to these Terms, your sole remedy is to retain the existing Terms unchanged for the duration of the Commitment Period (as defined below), upon notice to us within 30 days of your receipt of our notice of change in the Terms."

In Canada, it sure does: $60 for 10Mb service, and $1.50/GB overage fees past 95GB (up to a maximum of $50). That looks like $90/mo to me.

Prepaid data is almost like highway robbery in Canada. $2.99 CAD (~2.93USD) for 20MB I don't have data on Google Voice, but Skype is roughly 30kbps, so 20MB would only last 11 minutes.

I can't find data regarding Fido's prepaid data costs but I suspect it's similar to Rogers' since they're basically the same company.

Traffic management is necessary because bandwidth is less than infinite. Extreme consumers will impair service to others if there is no mechanism to prevent this. My company recently implemented bandwidth guarantees for VOIP traffic on the fiber between our buildings because file transfers were causing drop outs on phone calls. In other words our routers throttle file transfers to provide decent QOS for voice. I like the CRTC's approach because it provides transparency of ISPs QOS policies and creates an environment for competitive incentive to avoid abusive restrictions, with some fallback for adult supervision.

I'm a moderately heavy bittorent (Vuze) user. My ISP is Rogers Cable, whose internet service is available in a number of speeds/caps/pricing from $25 to $150 per month. Rogers has been reasonably open about its traffic management practices and is on record as throttling bittorrent on the upstream (from the house) because this is a scarce resource. Problems for me - nil; obscure torrents with few peers/seeds run slowly, popular torrents download like sh** through a goose; surfing and Skype work smoothly even in peak periods. I left Bell Sympatico when my experience was the opposite.

I guess you're right:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/iphone_voice_data_packages

There's no way the 3G (not the S) costs $200, only on select plans:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/iphone_release

My brother had already accepted the $350 when he got the offers for $500. I would have told the first person it was time for tethered swimming too.

I guess you're right:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/iphone_voice_data_packages

There's no way the 3G (not the S) costs $200, only on select plans:
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-products/iphone_release

My brother had already accepted the $350 when he got the offers for $500. I would have told the first person it was time for tethered swimming too.

Uhh, you could try our only GSM provider... Robbers $600? could that be why? I'm holding out for those cheap ones they're supposed to be saturating the market with any month now...

... I can say this is utter crap. Partially.
Any true (13 year old) hacker can do this will the iPhone, Pre, and probably the Android based phones. Same with a Linux laptop using a 3G data card.
At the wireless provider server level, we're working on hardening the security, but it does take time. We know there are vulnerabilities. Unfortunately it may just take a crash for Sr. Management to fund us properly.

I work for a wireless provider in Ontario that has a red logo. ;-)
I know the Blue team also has the same issues with the Pre and Androids; however, they do not have the iPhone.

here is some information from Canadian providers -- none of them specifically state what information they will or will not provide when requested or what is specifically logged. Most pages include contact information for a privacy rep. I suggest you contact that person(s) and see what information you can opt out of having tracked.

I have excluded TELUS because they are wh0r3ish and don't listen anyway.

From http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/AboutShaw/PrivacyPolicy/Index
3.3 How does Shaw obtain your consent? Consent is required for the collection of Personal Information and the subsequent use or disclosure of the Personal Information. Consent can be either expressed or implied. The form of consent sought by Shaw may vary, depending upon the circumstances and the type of Personal Information. In determining the form of consent to use, Shaw takes into account the sensitivity of the information and the reasonable expectations of the Customer, Employee or Web Site User. Shaw generally seeks express consent when the Personal Information is likely to be considered sensitive. Implied consent is typically appropriate when the Personal Information is less sensitive. In exceptional circumstances, as permitted by law, Shaw may collect, use or disclose Personal Information without a Customer, Employee or Web Site Userâ(TM)s knowledge or consent.

In general, the use of products and services by a Customer, or a Web Site User, or the acceptance of employment or benefits by an Employee, will constitute implied consent required by Shaw to collect, use and/or disclose Personal Information for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy.

Consent may be withdrawn by Customers and Web Site Users at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and upon providing Shaw reasonable notice. If you wish to withdraw your consent to certain collection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, please contact Shaw at privacy@shaw.ca.

and of course Rogers http://your.rogers.com/privacy1.asp

Welcome to Canada, he almost got a better rate then we do here Rogers Wireless which is the only provider of GSM unless he was with Bell or Telus for CDMA / TDMA. In Canada you have to deal with one of the three (there is Fido but they are really Rogers) for 1GB(yes o.n.e) it is $30/month with a 3 cent overage calculated per KB, this is from the Rogers and Telus is actually 5 cents per MB. If you can figure out what Bell is actually offering your likely a natural genius but all the plans start at $45.

You can tell I'm slightly bitter but paying this kinda dough just to have 'the right' to do what I want and have the same kind of access other places in the world have the opportunity to use it kind of makes me feel silly being Canadian.

I found this earlier today indicating that Rogers will allow anyone with a 1GB or greater data plan to tether. I called them to confirm and I am in fact allowed to consume bandwidth right up to my 6GB cap, same as if I was consuming the bandwidth on the phone itself.

The really surprising thing is that it's automatic. I didn't have to get them to turn anything on in my account. I simply turned it on in the Network Settings page and was able to tether my Windows 7 laptop and a friends Macbook Pro over both Bluetooth and USB without issues and, even more surprisingly, without iTunes installed (on the Win7 machine).

Bandwidth was around 3Mbps down and 0.3Mbps up, with a minimum ping of around 150ms, tested on multiple servers using Speedtest.net. This is in the middle of Halifax, NS.

From Rogers FAQ about the iPhone:- (scroll down to Tethering FAQs)

Can I tether on my iPhone?
To use tethering or wireless modem functionality you require the new iPhone 3G S, or an iPhone 3G that has been upgraded with the new iPhone OS 3.0 software. Until December 31, 2009, if you have subscribed to a data plan which includes at least 1GB of data you may use tethering as part of the volume of data included in your plan at no additional charge. Tethering cannot be used with data plans of less then 1GB.

Everyone who loves their all-you-can-eat iPhone data: enjoy it while it lasts."

In New Zealand on our iPhone plans,

• the most expensive, $130/month, gets us 500MB.
• The cheapest, $40/month, gets us 250MB.

All only available on a 24 month contract. My heart bleeds you for America.

I think I speak for all Canadian cell phone users when I say that you Kiwis have it really good, relative to us, of course.

Here's an example:

http://your.rogers.com/business/wireless/plans_services/business_plans.asp?plan=dataservice&cat=2&typ=2

In Canada pretty much all the big cellphone companies still offer paging service:

http://www.primustel.ca/en/residential/paging/
http://www.your.rogers.com/store/wireless/products/pagers/business/overview.asp
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpWls_Pagers.page

Rogers in Canada still does paging too.

http://your.rogers.com/store/wireless/products/pagers/business/overview.asp

Correct me if I'm wrong... but aren't contracts breakable without termination charges if the service provider changes the contract?

The SMS fees are not covered by the contract terms. The contract says the cellphone company can change the SMS charges at will. Is that legal? I dunno.

His broken-record touting of "free market will be best" on the telecom issue is laughably absurd for anyone who's had to pay a phone bill in the last 10 years.

The free market hasn't worked out well for landline or cellphone service where there are large barriers to entry. The free market has been absolutely wonderful for long-distance service. Ten years ago I remember paying 35 cents a minute for calling Toronto-Montreal, and that was a great rate. Today I pay 3 cents a minute (from a major phone company).

Why are you picking on the Conservatives? You should blame the former Liberal government.

It was the former government led by the Liberal Party of Canada that allowed cellphone competition in Canada to disappear.

There used to be a number of major cellphone providers: Fido, Clearnet, Rogers, Bell, Telus.

The Liberals allowed Rogers to buy Fido, and Telus was allowed to buy Clearnet. Not surprisingly, prices jumped quite a bit afterward!

For decades it has been the law in Canada is that a phone company must be majority owned by Canadians, so foreign competition isn't allowed. I too would like a strong Canadian cellphone industry. But it's time to rethink this law.

I would rather Canada's cellphone industry be dominated by foreigners (AT&T, Tmobile, Vodaphone) than being screwed every month by Canadians.

The CEO of RIM (maker of the blackberry and a Canadian company) has said many times that the crappy prices & service of Canadian cellphone companies is holding back progress.

Canadians pay the worst prices in the western world for cellphone service. Not surprisingly, Canadians have the lowest cellphone ownership rates in the western world.

Canadian cellphone companies will claim this is because Canada is a large country with a small population, and this drives up costs. Bullshit. The vast majority of the Canadian land mass has no cellphone service. Canadian cellphone companies only provide service to areas of sufficient population. Unlike landline providers, cellphone companies are not required to provide service in areas of low population. Have a look at the coverage map of Rogers (the largest cellphone company) for Saskatchewan.

I will also be starting to use a third party DNS server tonight. In the mean time I have had a conversation to lodge a complaint with technical support and also sent them a support request email asking similar questions. https://your.rogers.com/contact/contactus_main.asp

I tried this, and then entered a garbage domain. All it does it take you to http://www20.search.rogers.com/not_found which offers you the chance to "opt in" again. Grrrr.

$ curl -I "psufsdfsdf.com" -A "Mozilla"
HTTP/1.1 302 Document has moved Location: http://www20.search.rogers.com/search?qo=psufsdfsdf.com&rn=U6do4kni7b5-cE2
running curl without modifying user agent will get proper results.
Modify Headers currently isn't working for me to modify the User-Agent http header. Try some other firefox addon, if anyone knows of one that works properly.

I'm on Rogers High-Speed, and they are certainly poisoning my requests. Lots of ads on their invalid URL pages. It has a link on the page, "Learn More About This Page", which brings you to another ad-ridden page with the following text:

"These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you encounter as you surf.

No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.

Click here if you would no longer like to receive the Rogers Supported Search Results service."

Emphasis theirs, obviously. Clicking the link brings you to another page with the following:

"You have successfully changed the selected landing page returned from the Rogers Supported Search Results service. If you would like to revert back to the default results page, simply delete your "search.rogers.com" cookie or return to options.search.rogers.com

NOTE: If you delete your cookies, or use a program that deletes cookies, you have to repeat this process every time your cookies are deleted."

However, I was quick to note that invalid DNS requests still bring up a Rogers page. It's not the search page -- instead, it's a fake IE "The page cannot be displayed" error! The URL for this is listed as http://www20.search.rogers.com/not_found. AFAICT it even tries to refer to a DLL to load IE-style images.

Funny how I get this message in Firefox. It does the whole "Cannot find server or DNS Error; Internet Explorer" thing. Rogers makes no reference to Microsoft trademarks on this page, funny enough.

The only thing different about the page is a link at the bottom, "Change to Supported Search Results option".

Rogers, you fucking fail.

If you want to teach them a lesson, put this in a hidden iframe on all of your sites:

http://www20.search.rogers.com/options?choice=none

Ho ho, That's so funny, Rogers.

But I know for a fact that I'm NOT using Internet Explorer! Haha, Rogers, fooled again!

I use Shaw, and to my knowledge, they haven't pulled off this crap... yet.

Yes, it's obnoxious and offensive and worth pointing out that at the bottom of their 'helpful' page is a link marked LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PAGE which gives the following explanation:

These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you encounter as you surf.

No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.

Click here if you would no longer like to receive the Rogers Supported Search Results service.

Now for the best part. All that links does is display this custom error page (with the help of a delightful cookie, no less). Rogers has dug out a crawl space under their all time low. What a bunch of idiots.

Yes, it's obnoxious and offensive and worth pointing out that at the bottom of their 'helpful' page is a link marked LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PAGE which gives the following explanation:

These search results were provided because the domain name you entered into the address bar is either improperly formatted, currently unavailable, nonexistent, or part of a key word search. Rogers Supported Search Results is a service designed to enhance your web surfing experience by eliminating many of the error pages you encounter as you surf.

No software was installed on your computer for this service to work.

Click here if you would no longer like to receive the Rogers Supported Search Results service.

Now for the best part. All that links does is display this custom error page (with the help of a delightful cookie, no less). Rogers has dug out a crawl space under their all time low. What a bunch of idiots.

You said "locations". A postal Code or Lat Long would help.

Anyway, Just get a Rogers Portable internet modem for a $100 and a Parabolic Grid WiFi Antenna or better and point it to Fort McMurray, AB: Postal code T9H3L1 or your nearest Rogers antenna and Voila you've got high speed!

You said "locations". A postal Code or Lat Long would help.

Anyway, Just get a Rogers Portable internet modem for a $100 and a Parabolic Grid WiFi Antenna or better and point it to Fort McMurray, AB: Postal code T9H3L1 or your nearest Rogers antenna and Voila you've got high speed!

A friend of mine works for a company selling the iPhone 2. According to him if you lose your iPhone 2 you will 1. Have to pay full price to get a new one (not too surprising imo) and

This is true of all cell phones. Not only if you 'lose it', but if you damage it in ways that are not covered by warranty, or if you damage it out of warranty. (most cell phones have a 1 year warranty although you can often buy extended warranty.) however liquid damage and physical damage are never covered.

2. Re-sign up for a 2 year contract.

This really makes no sense.

There is -always- an early termination provision that can be exercised if the phone is lost, or you move out of country or whatever. Here in Canada on Rogers, for an iphone, it is the greater of $100 or $20 per month remaining in the contract, to a maximum of $400.

http://www.rogers.com/cms/html/iphone_vpterms.shtml

Based on that losing the iphone 2.5 years in, one could always payout $120 (20$x6 months), and then get a new one on a 3 year contract for $199... (or whatever they would be at that point.)

And that's 'worst case'. Usually if you have the intention of signing a new 3 year contract and your well into an existing contract the carrier will offer you a some sort of 'deal'.

Now suppose you lost an iphone on day 2 of your 3 year contract, typically, you'd simply have to replace it at full price, and you'd still be held to the terms of your original contract. Its absurd that they would tack on an extra 2 years (a 5 year contract on a cell phone?!), and even more absurd that you'd have your contract shortened.

And under this scenario, if you lost your iphone on the 2nd day, and they wanted to rope you into a 5 year contract, and charge you $600 replacement, you would simply exercise the early termination: $400. And then sign up to a new 3 year: $199. Same $600 bucks, but only a 3 year contract.