iPhone pricing and Rogers Wireless

I just moved to Canada in 2006, and I'm shocked at Canadians willingness to accecpt Monopolies. My grandfather started a phone company in the 1930s, and everyone in the town who bought service, got a phone and a share of the phone company. Every year Ma bell tried to buy him out and cited "We're the phone company, there are no Mom and pop phone companies" he beat them for 50 years" using the US antitrust act, decided against the Rockefellers and Standard Oil. Last year the shareholders decided to sell off a piece of it to a wireless company from Arkansas in a deal worth millions. We all came out a winner on the deal, with each shareholder making $80,000.

Come tax time and Revenue Canada takes 43% of the gain, because I'm now considered a Canadian resident even though I'm still waiting for a green card and have no medical. there's good and bad in both countries,
but for things like Cable, and wireless you guys are getting screwed, and no one seems to lift a finger to challenge the robber barons.

The Americans deserve Bush because they believed the soundbites and voted him in. the Canadians get the Corporate government they deserve from public apathy and trusting in the system.

Jimosai said:

>What this country needs is a new form of >government, in the very least an elected leader >and senate, so our votes can have some kind of >meaningful impact.

Unfortunately that is unlikely to happen being that we are pretty much at the whim of psycopaths in positions of power...

http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/articles/show/136382-Almost+Human+-++Psychopaths+In+Power

My sincere sympathy for the Canucks.

Skype Voip is already available for the iPhone and others are coming. The future of broadband is Wifi and WiMax and ultimately the carriers will become, as Steve Jobs states, "mere portals".

The price of an iPhone justifies its value as the best iPod ever, plus PDA and Web Browser over wifi...just carry a cheap cell phone with you, until wifi becomes more and more universal. In this, the iPhone is helping to bust the oligopolistic carriers.

John,
Come on down to the U.S., I have dual citizenship and I live down here. The grass is not greener on the other fence. Sure things are cheaper down here. But than one pays through the nose for health insurance. Education is pretty expensive for a non citizen-let alone an out of state resident. But than you're young and don't know better.
Good luck on getting a green card. I suppose you could always join the military. Their recruitment is not reaching their goals. They could always use a fresh face in Iraq.

Rogers is bad, and bought their biggest competitor FIDO, to extend their network and user base.

If Apple would sell the iPhone unlocked you still need a GSM carrier with a reasonably priced data plan. Telus/Bell/MTS etc won't work since they don't use the GSM system.

There are rumours that another phone carrier is coming to the market when the Canadian gouvernment is going to auction of new spectrum for 3G. A new company that only does 3G GSM and doesn't have to upgrade all their old towers and also cater to first and second generation GSM phones might become profitable faster, and can maybe compete with the existing carriers on price. Right now, the only carriers that compete on price are the Virgin mobile and Presidents Choice carriers that just buy huge bundles from Bell and other ILECS (Incumbent Local Cariers, equavalent to the US's Baby Bells) and resell them under their own brand. I for one, would welcome such new overlords.

In the meantime I just don't use my cellphone very much because a plan is way too expensive (You have to add another 15 dollars to every plan for various charges + 14% sales tax (in my province)) so I use a prepaid plan and every minute (minimum is one minute) costs 33 cents (and it's going to be 40 cents/minute in a couple of weeks!), so that keeps me effectively from using it.

Gahh! Damn it Rogers! I want my freakin' iPhone. Of course all of the Canadian cell phone company's are known to screw us...

why do they all have to suck so much? Can't I just get an iPhone?

So far the only company I haven't had anyone experience a good screwing from is Telus... Fido, Rogers and Bell however have all managed to sucessfully screw me.

@ Jeremy,

Visual Voicemail does require both client and server-side accommodations. How else would the iPhone be able to correct view the number of a voice message kept on the server and be able to access it out of sequence?

I'm in Toronto and I now spend my entire day staring longingly at the back of an iPhone as a colleague of mine recently received his. Cellular support or not, this is an absolutely phenomenal 6 Gen iPod that is an awfully slick Unix-based handheld computer to boot.

We know app support must be coming eventually so give me a VOIP app and for the 20% of my existence that I'm *not* within wifi range I'll use my disposable cellular phone. Data over cellular is absolutely not the future, so let Rogers Wireless screw themselves out of some profit before their business completely collapses... that's their prerogative.

In general companies in Canada are minimally competitive and we have a government agency that seems to exist merely to make sure that these companies remain non-competitive (by severely limiting services or by either making it unfairly expensive or outright impossible for a foreign company to do business here). What this country needs is a new form of government, in the very least an elected leader and senate, so our votes can have some kind of meaningful impact.

#10, 11:

I plan to as soon as I'm over 18. What a joke of a country. United States here I come!