Confirmed: Rogers Canada Offering 6 GB Monthly Data Plans for $30/month for Windows Mobile Smartphones, Until August 31st

[Jason Dunn]

<p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com//spt/auto/1215802355.usr1.gif" alt="" /></p><p>Some good news for our Canadian readers: I just got off the phone with Rogers Canada, and according to the woman I spoke with, the 6 GB of monthly data for $30/month is an open offer to all 3G smartphones, including Windows Mobile phones. There are some caveats on this, the biggest being it has to be a new three-year activation, or involve a hardware upgrade. The reality is that Rogers wan't to either acquire you as a new customer, or get you to drop a few hundred dollars in hardware, in order to qualify for this offer - but even with that, this still seems like a staggeringly good deal. So good, in fact, I'm not sure I'm going to believe it until I've switched from Fido and see my first bill. Any of my fellow Canadians going to jump on this offer? It apparently ends August 31st (though that may just be marketing hype).</p>

[Hooch Tan]

Hooray for Jason! Thanks for finding this out! I do have on question though. After the "hardware upgrade" do you think they'd mind if I ended up using my own phone? I already have a 3g phone that I'm comfortable with. If I do a hardware upgrade then swap the sim card, (the old phone probably being a handy backup) do you think that'd nullify the data plan?

6GB for $30 is reasonable enough for me to go with data again. Many thanks!

[Jason Dunn]

After the "hardware upgrade" do you think they'd mind if I ended up using my own phone?

No clue at all, sorry. You'd have to talk to someone from Rogers for a question that specific.

[Hooch Tan]

Many thanks regardless. I'll probably give them a call in a few days as I suspect that they're just a wee bit busy today. ;)

[Jason Dunn]

Many thanks regardless. I'll probably give them a call in a few days as I suspect that they're just a wee bit busy today. ;)

Yes, they're quite busy today - when I called I got someone who didn't know very much about data plans, but was able to finally confirm it for me.

[ctmagnus]

I'd bet that if you called in, you could get the plan - no new anything required. I've spent too much time on the phone with Rogers lately, though, so I'll wait a few weeks before I try this one.

[Gerard]

Oh well, had to be a catch. My O2 Atom is happy enough for now, running WM6. It's not 3G compatible so guess I'll have to see if this offer is still around by the time I get seriously interested in shopping for a new phone. Still, if this pans out I have to admit Rogers finally got a bit of common sense smacked into their wee little corporate brain. Seems unlikely they were getting a lot of data subscribers, based on their previous rates.

[Jason Dunn]

I'd bet that if you called in, you could get the plan - no new anything required.

Yeah? Well, I'll certainly give it a try. :)

[Jason Dunn]

Oh well, had to be a catch. My O2 Atom is happy enough for now, running WM6.

As someone who missed the opportunity to get a $50 unlimited EDGE data plan a few years ago and greatly regretted it, I'll only say that you never know how stupid companies like Rogers and Fido are going to be when it comes to this kind of thing, so don't let an opportunity pass you by.

[jerboa]

I'd bet that if you called in, you could get the plan - no new anything required. I've spent too much time on the phone with Rogers lately, though, so I'll wait a few weeks before I try this one.

My three-year Rogers servitude contract ends in August - I wonder if I can negotiate to have this added to my account (without any hardware or new contract) to remain 'a faithful Rogers customer'.

We'll see...

[Anando]

If any of you read Howardforums, you will know that this plan works for any 2G or 3G phone including non-Rogers (unlocked) phones. More information can be found here:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1395635

[Gerard]

Apparently HowardForums doesn't allow external linking... or at least that link doesn't work for me.

But looking on their front page, there's a series of updates on the Rogers/Fido 6GB/$30 data plan, with much of the text shown with lines through it. Last comment is:

*update 2 - Now i’m not sure if it will or will not work on unlocked and grey market phones. Stay tuned.

So I guess we'll have to stay tuned. :-/

[dece]

hi all,

i called rogers cs yesterday and had them add the plan to my phone.

http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-plans/iphone_adpacks

i have an htc s630 and its a 3 g phone... but if you call and say I want the 3 g data plan for smartphones, when CS answers and says what phone do you have just say you have the htc. don't even mention the model and i'm sure they will add it without you having to buy some new hardware.

i'm waiting for a windows mobile 3g phone with UMA before I upgrade. :)

[Jason Dunn]

So I went into a Rogers Wireless store on Saturday and was starting the process to move my number over, and was told that this 6 GB data plan will ONLY work on Rogers phones. I asked how they were able to determine which was a Rogers phone, and he said they "scan all the phones".

I think that's about 90% BS, but I didn't want to lock in for a long term and be stuck using one phone...so I have to do more research on this, maybe reach out to a Rogers PR person and see if I can get some answers.

What a pain this is. :rolleyes:

[Hooch Tan]

Thank you Jason for the update. I can tell you that I am aware that Rogers does check the IMEI of phones, but I don't know how much they use that information. I'd like to think they don't care, since they get more money from those of us who use unlocked phones and utilize the same plan. But this is Rogers we're talking about.

[yslee]

6 gigabytes? Still feels somewhat low. I guess it wouldn't be so bad for a smartphone, but if you're going to use it tethered it might be limiting...

[Jason Dunn]

I'd like to think they don't care, since they get more money from those of us who use unlocked phones and utilize the same plan. But this is Rogers we're talking about.

Exactly! If I'm paying them $60/month for voice + data, and they're capping me at 6 GB, why the hell should they care what kind of device I'm using? I find that sort of corporate blindness infuriating. :mad:

[Jason Dunn]

Ok, so I made the leap: the only way they'd give me the $30/6 GB plan was if I committed to a three year contract. So I signed up, got the Samsung Jack for $49, and I'll see what happens when I try to get my Diamond on their network...stay tuned!

[Gerard]

Alright Jason! Took one for the team! Okay, so I know you wanted this... you haven't exactly made a secret of your longstanding desire to have a decent data plan for your PPC, but still. Way to go. Many fellow canucks will be waiting to hear the outcome.

[ctmagnus]

What?!?!? You have to sign a contract to get it? :eek: :mad: That's #$*%. I have never been on a contract with any wireless carrier and I don't plan to start anytime soon, regardless of what they offer.

[Jason Dunn]

What?!?!?

This wins the Thoughts Media Community Achievement Award in the category of "Best Use of Font Size". Pick your choice of micro light (Pocket PC Thoughts, Smartphone Thoughts, Digital Media Thoughts or Zune Thoughts) and PM me your address and I'll mail you one. :D

You have to sign a contract to get it? :eek: :mad: That's #$*%.

Yeah, it sucks if you're an anti-contract person. I don't mind, because who else am I going to go with for GSM? It's not like I'm going to switch to Telus or Bell. :rolleyes:

[Hooch Tan]

Yeah, it sucks if you're an anti-contract person. I don't mind, because who else am I going to go with for GSM? It's not like I'm going to switch to Telus or Bell. :rolleyes:

I'm sad to admit that I have to agree with you, Jason. With Canada only having effectively one GSM carrier, options are very limited. I find it likely, although unfortunate that I'm very likely going to be with Rogers for the next three years regardless, so why not sign a contract?

I noticed you picked the Samsung Jack as the "official" Rogers phone you're getting. Any reason you picked that one over the others?

[Jason Dunn]

I noticed you picked the Samsung Jack as the "official" Rogers phone you're getting. Any reason you picked that one over the others?

Complete thread here:

http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/news/show/89883

:)

[Hooch Tan]

Complete thread here:

http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/news/show/89883

:)

Search is my friend. Search is my friend. Many thanks!

/noob

[Hooch Tan]

For those who are interested, and don't already know, it appears that the rumour about being able to use a non-Rogers phone with the 6GB/$30/mo data plan is possible. I found the following FAQ on Howard Forums:

http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=11375527

Hooray! Activate interlocks! Dynatherms connected! Infracells up! Grey market phones are go!

[Gerard]

Colour me silly, but I followed Jason's lead this afternoon and signed up for the plan. The rep at Rogers was perfectly okay with my O2 XDA Atom, no quibbling about getting new hardware at all. Took less than 5 minutes to get through my questions and his. The only hitch was that he insisted that my voice contract, due to expire in February 2009 (guess I renewed then when changing plan options and forgot about the date), had to be extended to 3 years from tomorrow. My billing period is from the 17th. I argued that on HowardForums and elsewhere I'd read that it was possible to set up the 3 year contract for data only but he would not budge. So, as others have said, there really are no options for GSM in Canada... might as well stay with Rogers another 3 years then see what might be available.

I just ran a bandwidth test on the O2 with pcpitstop.com and it says 30kbps. The Rogers rep couldn't tell me about such details. Perhaps if he had, I might have hung up before agreeing. Or not. The bug is certainly in the air. But if 30kbps is actually what I can expect, it would seem that YouTube videos eating up my 6GB is the least of my worries! It'd take a lot longer than a month to eat up a month's allowable data.

So, another test at testmy.net... and eventually got a result of 47kbps. Came with a sarcastic note: 'Ouch, are you on dial-up or something?' Cute. Says I can download about 1MB in 170seconds. So yeah, pretty sad. I live in a bit of a hollow, and no cell towers visible around here, though we're a fairly densely populated part of Vancouver. Typically I have to repeat at least one sentence every second phone call, as people describe hearing 'about one word of every three.' Embarrassing at times, being with 'Canada's most reliable network' as Rogers claims to be. My phone shows one bar in parts of the house (we're on the top two floors of a four floor house, nothing as tall around us but trees), four bars in others. I see five bars most places in the city.

Now a YouTube test with CorePlayer.
ewwwww... very, very slow. After about 5 minutes, almost 10 seconds of a music video buffered and sort of played in 1/2 second bursts. Trying again with something perhaps less demanding... Nope, nothing but buffering no matter which video I choose, from the mobile YouTube site or the main one.

Trying in TCPMP now... Okay, somewhat better. A very low res video streamed smoothly but with 3 brief interruptions for buffering, after an initial 90 seconds or so of buffering. Seems my next ridiculously self-indulgent expense will be the purchase of a 3G phone. I'm not a huge YouTube user for myself anyway, but my toddler is in love with steam locomotives, and it'll be handy if I have the ability to browse and stream such videos whenever he gets too cranky for anything else, like when reading (crazy for books!) or food or tossing him around won't do the trick.

Just for laughs, I downloaded an FLV of 5.6MB from YouTube while typing this. It took just over 3 minutes. So downloading isn't nearly so bad as streaming, at least in this test. Oh well, first impression is of fairly lousy speed, inconsistent connection (disconnected and had to search for Rogers once during these tests, keeping offline for almost a minute), but email is about the same as dialup speed and that's okay, as I use nPOPuk and have it set for a 400 line download preview anyway. No serious delays there, just about 1/5th the rate of new message display and server update when deleting compared to using Wi-Fi.

[Hooch Tan]

I too have taken the plunge. Following the instructions from Howard Forums, I was able to sign up for the 6GB plan for 3 years. Incidentally, I was able to sign up for 3 years on the data plan only, however, I also took the time to adjust my voice plan (unlimited incoming was something I wanted) so I ended up also signing up for a 3 year voice plan. Seeing that I was locked into 3 years for data with Rogers, I didn't see this as an issue and I did confirm that should my voice plan needs change, I can change it during the 3 years, so if I really wanted to, I could change it to some minimal plan and switch to something else.

Unfortunately, the phones I currently have at my disposal are an O2 XDA IIs and an iMate JasJar. The XDA IIs is limited to GPRS only, so I was only going to expect dial up speeds with that one, and the JasJar's UMTS is for the 2.1Ghz band only, which Rogers doesn't support, so GPRS for that too. Still, I'm finding reasonable speeds with GPRS such as it is. I was able to run a few LogMeIn tests and the screen updates are slow but bearable such that I can manage.

Gerard, I looked up the O2 XDA Atom and its specs show it GSM900, GSM1800 and GSM1900, which means you're using the 1.9Ghz band. For data, it's GPRS and EDGE, so I would've thought you could expect around 200kbps speeds which works out to maybe 20-40kB/s speeds which I think sounds somewhat consistent with your download test. If you got a phone with HSDPA, then I think you'd find speeds comparable to broadband. At least, that's my understanding of the underlying technology.

[Jason Dunn]

Colour me silly, but I followed Jason's lead this afternoon and signed up for the plan...my O2 XDA Atom...bandwidth test on the O2 with pcpitstop.com and it says 30kbps. The Rogers rep couldn't tell me about such details. Perhaps if he had, I might have hung up before agreeing. Or not.

I think that's about average because your 02 XDA Atom only has EDGE...and I've found with Fido/Rogers EDGE tops out at about 64 kbps under the best circumstances. Were you expecting faster speeds? You'll need 3G hardware to get 3G speeds my friend. :D However, even still, 6 GB is virtually unlimited for you on that device, so you can use it with impunity and not have to worry much.

Does anyone know if Rogers has a way to track your bandwidth usage? I sure hope so - Fido doesn't, and it always ticked me off that they had a bandwidth cap but no way for the customer to see how much they'd used. :mad:

[Gerard]

Not that I was expecting faster rates, more like uninformed wishful thinking. Since I've never used a cellular data connection before in any context my interest hasn't exactly been up at the top of the list, so my notion of what to expect was vague. I'll live with this happily enough until I find the right next phone and sell this one.

Speaking of which - and pardon the off-topic question (no one has to answer) - has anyone got experience yet with the Eten X800? I like the specs overall, though the 2.83 inch screen isn't exactly thrilling. At least it's VGA, and has a decent allotment of RAM. What I'd like to know is, how does the screen look in direct sunlight and in other difficult lighting circumstances? If it's an awesome screen outside (which this Atom certainly isn't - find myself doing the tilt-a-PPC dance almost as often as I did with my old Casio EG-800, just trying to see who's calling me or check an address) then it seems likely one of the best bets for a successor to the Atom for me. I'll check again, but think it's 3G, so this Rogers data connection should work a whole lot faster. There are a couple of local sellers on craigslist offering the X800 for around $500 new. Or of course opinions welcomed about other high end models with VGA, perhaps bigger screens, 3G, no thumb-board (ick!), and Wi-Fi integrated. And decent battery life. Sorry, seems I've wandered far off topic. But hey, it's somewhat valid, wondering which of the high end phones (ie; not what Rogers is offering with plans) might be best to use with this data package.

-----------

edit: Never mind. Took a few minutes to go through trustedreviews' pages and it seems the X800 Glofiish is just about exactly what I want next. The big downside in their estimation is a tendency sometimes to lag, in spite of a 500MHz CPU. Well, since every one of the Pocket PCs I've ever used has shared this property, I'd hardly expect any different. Seems to go with the territory, even with my famously quick (yeah, right) iPAQ 3835. Several soft resets per day are the norm for the past 8 years of my life. Sometimes I wish I could do the same to my brain, get me kick started into a quicker mode. So guess I'm more or less settled on this one, unless something truly amazing comes along in the next two months or so.