Canadian Data Prices Heat Up

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/11/16/bell.and.telus.vs.iphone/' target='_blank'>http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/11/16/bell.and.telus.vs.iphone/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>&quot;Rivals to Canadian provider Rogers Wireless are dramatically lowering the prices for data access as a defensive measure against the iPhone even before the device is announced for the country, according to a new report by the analyst firm Seaboard Group. A comparison of the access rates required needed to download 1GB of data per month shows the prices dropping dramatically since June: where customers could expect to pay more than $2,250 for the Internet bandwidth at the time, a price drop by Telus in mid-summer dropped the price to $375. By November, both Telus and its fellow CDMA carrier Bell were charging about $100.&quot;</em></p><p>As much as we would all like to think that the price is dropping thanks to Apple, that's just not the case.&nbsp; Price is dropping as the adoption rate increases.&nbsp; It's just that simple and like it or not, Canada is just a fraction of the size of the US market.&nbsp; So it will take a while until our prices can match those of the major US carriers from a couple years ago. From what I've read, the new $7 plan isn't new after all it's just $7 for WAP access.&nbsp; Who uses WAP anymore? </p>

[sebschindler]

Hi!
Well, you are right ... who uses only WAP anymore ...
Hmmm ... me! ;-) I still use my so called 'Wap Flatrate' from O2.
This works good for all webpages, my push-e-mail, etc. Even in UK (still free for me) and the US.
Little limitations are the 3rd party programs with special server requests, e.g. Opera or GMail-App ... But I am trying to get over this.
Greetings.

[mrmagoo]

For $7/month, new subscribers purchasing the HTC Touch have access to an unlimited internet bundle. So, what does this give you?t
- Full access to email (with attachments) using the built-in WM6 Outlook application. This means that the email client can be conifgured to be used with POP3 or IMAP email service. And it will also work with a Microsoft Exchange server so Push-email is supported.
- Full access to the internet *only* using the HTC Touch device. Browse using the internet using the IE mobile browser without any limits. You can go on to CNN.com, youtube.com etc. These are not WAP sites.

What you can't do. Tether the Touch to a laptop or other terminal. In essense all access must be done on the Touch.

I went to a Bell store and the person demoing the HTC Touch indicated that you can stream audio/video to the device. If you want to edit Word documents or Excel documents that people send to you, you have the option of editing right on the Touch. Or just plug your mini-USB cable into the Touch and when Activesync synchronizes with the Touch, copy the document to your laptop, edit it, and then copy it back to your Touch to send the document as an attachment.

All-in-all, for $7/month this is a superb deal. Canada had one of the worst wireless data costs. This now puts Canada at the forefront in terms of pricing for wireless data access. Yes, it's not a complete solution, so, you can't use the Touch as a dial-up-modem, but, for the price, it's something that I'm willing to live with.

[groan]

But isnt that $7 only for a limited time and ONLY if you buy the touch?
I just bought the HTC 5800 (obviously about 3 weeks too early) and woudl have had to pay $25 for 4 MB of data.