From:Gerard CC:World » uncategorized http://blog.metrailler.net A little about everything, a lot about nothing Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:26:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 iPhone in Canada: Looking into the numbers http://blog.metrailler.net/2008/06/30/iphone-in-canada-looking-into-the-numbers/ http://blog.metrailler.net/2008/06/30/iphone-in-canada-looking-into-the-numbers/#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:11:37 +0000 Gérard http://blog.metrailler.net/?p=152 There has been a lot of commenting, discussions and complains about the price plans that Rogers / Fido are offering for the 3G iPhone in Canada. The Ruined iPhone web site is an online petition for Rogers to revise their monthly pricing.

The one huge thing that is a potential show-stopper for me is the 3-year contract that you have to sign to be able to have an iPhone in Canada. I don’t know what will happen in 3 years time, but I am 100% certain that I won’t have the same phone (iPhone 4.0 should be out by then). I would not mind paying more more for the phone now so that I don’t need to get locked in for such a long period of time.

Digging further into the offering, I wanted to do the math behind cost for data usage, to get a better picture of what we are actually talking about… and the findings are quite interesting. All pricing below are in Canadian Dollars.

In a nutshell, if you expect to transfer more than 2.1Gb per month and don’t use the iPhone as a phone a lot (under 150 minutes per month), go with the $60 plan, it’s cheaper! If you transfer 5Gb per month, it will cost you $229.80, $234.30, $251.08 and $235.36 on the $60, $75, $100 and $115 plans respectively.

So what do the numbers tell us. Last week, Rogers / Fido announced the price plans they are going to offer for the iPhone in Canada. Here is a screenshot of their pricing as of June 30th (link to the page here):

My initial reaction was really negative based on this. Historically, I haven’t used my cell phones a lot as a phone, but am expecting to use the data option of the iPhone extensively. Therefore linking the included minutes with the data usage doesn’t make sense to me. I am, for the rest of this post, assuming that 150 minutes of voice communications per month will be more than enough for my needs.

And when it comes to text messages, I am planning to have CallerID on my phone, e.g. I will certainly end-up with the $15 Value Pack 1 that bumps the SMS count to 2,500 on every plan (not sure about the extra $5 for the Value Pack 2).

Therefore, the choice of the price plan really comes down to the data usage. To better understand this, I built a little spreadsheet that calculates the actual cost for different amounts of data transfered, resulting in interesting findings. Again, all these assume that the number of included voice minutes are irrelevant.

  • You can immediately see the spike due to the first extra 60Mb at $0.5 per Megabyte vs. the $0.03 per Mb linear increase thereafter.
  • First and foremost, avoid the $100 plan (green line in the graph)… it is the most expensive of all by over $20 per month, except if you are certain you will be between 800Mb and 1Gb every month.
  • The $115 plan (purple line in the graph) only makes sense if you are going to be between 1 and 2Gb every month. Above 2.05Gb of data transfer, it will cost you about 6$ more per month than on the $60 plan.
  • The $75 plan (red line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer between 400Mb and 800Mb. Above that, it is about $5 more expensive than the $60 plan, and it is $1 cheaper than the $115 plan if you transfer more than 2.1Gb per month.
  • The $60 plan (blue line in the graph) is the cheapest if you transfer less than 400 Mb or more than 2.1Gb. Comparing the $60 and the $115 plans, you are better off with the cheapest plan except if you know you will be between 1.25 an 2.05Gb per month of data transfer every month for 3 years.
In conclusion, the best option from a price perspective (and the most flexible one) for high-data consumers is to go with the $60 per month price plan, especially if you don’t make a lot of voice calls. If you need more minutes per month for voice, go with:
  • the $75 plan if you need between 150 and 300 minutes per month, knowing that these will cost you about $5 more per month for data charges on high volume. This is worth it considering a $0.35 per extra voice minute.
  • the $115 plan if you need between 300 and 800 minutes per month. This plan will cost you about $6 more per month if you transfer more than 2.05Gb of data per month.
Hopefully, Rogers will change its policy about linking voice minutes with data transfer shortly. And even more importantly, hopefully Rogers and/or Fido will remove the 3-year contract requirement they currently have in place, charging more for the phone like some European operators are doing.
]]> http://blog.metrailler.net/2008/06/30/iphone-in-canada-looking-into-the-numbers/feed/ 1 Test of email bloggoling from the iPhone http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/11/16/test-of-email-bloggoling-from-the-iphone/ http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/11/16/test-of-email-bloggoling-from-the-iphone/#comments Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:20:55 +0000 Gérard http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/11/16/test-of-email-bloggoling-from-the-iphone/ Just trying out some features of my blogging server… Sorry to add irrelevant messages to your RSS reader.

]]> http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/11/16/test-of-email-bloggoling-from-the-iphone/feed/ 0 All my best wishes for 2007! http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/01/01/all-my-best-wishes-for-2007/ http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/01/01/all-my-best-wishes-for-2007/#comments Mon, 01 Jan 2007 21:26:35 +0000 Gérard http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/01/01/all-my-best-wishes-for-2007/ Another very busy year has just rushed through and it’s already the start of a new one. I wanted to wish you all a very happy new year… and yes, as there needs to be good resolutions for the new year, here is one from my side: I’ll try to be more active on my blog :-)

]]> http://blog.metrailler.net/2007/01/01/all-my-best-wishes-for-2007/feed/ 0 Blogging while travelling – testing the email posting http://blog.metrailler.net/2006/12/30/blogging-while-travelling-testing-the-email-posting/ http://blog.metrailler.net/2006/12/30/blogging-while-travelling-testing-the-email-posting/#comments Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:15:55 +0000 Gérard http://blog.metrailler.net/2006/12/30/blogging-while-travelling-testing-the-email-posting/ OK, WordPress has this cool feature that enables you to post blog entries by sending an email… so here is a quick try to see if everything works :-)

]]> http://blog.metrailler.net/2006/12/30/blogging-while-travelling-testing-the-email-posting/feed/ 0 So what’s about this blogging thing anyway http://blog.metrailler.net/2005/10/14/15/ http://blog.metrailler.net/2005/10/14/15/#comments Sat, 15 Oct 2005 00:25:40 +0000 Gérard http://blog2.metrailler.net/2005/10/14/15/ An initial post on my weblog as it seems to be a requirement if you are somewhat in IT to have a blog, and a few thoughts about blogging, this blog and a few words about myself.

Yes, that correct. Everybody has his or her own blog. So it is really time for me to have my own… so let’s get going then. Just wondering where how it will evolve and how often this blog will be updated. So what’s all this noise about blogging. Sharing thoughts, ideas and information, but not knowing if anyone will ever read. Yes, a weblog, especially a private one, is a place the owner will upload content that he hopes will be read by someone else… otherwise, why bother? Who will read it? I know, I could start advertising and making this blog a lot more visible, even get some paid advertising if I am really desperate to get my voice heard, but I prefer to use this open space to write down some of my thoughts, ideas and other completely irrelevant things.

For those who have been on my web site, it’s been a while since I had a change to do anything there. I actually have a lot of ideas for a new design, new content and I really need to start uploading my latest pictures. I will be doing this progressively, and in the mean-time, I’ve become yet another blogger. A few words about myelf. I live in the UK (in Maidenhead, Berkshire to be exact) and work for Corel Corporation in the UK as International Product Manager. The International word in my title means I travel a lot, and the Product management aspect means that I spend a lot of time talking to customers, partners and press, while keeping an eye on the technology evolution and how it can benefit our customers. I also need to put in writing once that anything on my private web site (including this blog) is in no way related, representative or endorsed by my employer. I am the sole person responsible for anything on my private web site. Now that the legal blurb is out of the way, let’s continue. From a technology side, I love to try new things, which means that the server which hosts this blog might be down from time to time. This blog is now hosted on a Mac OS X Server 10.4. Really cool solution for a small to medium business who needs a server with everything. Perhaps more in a future blog post. That’s all for now. More to come in a (hopefully) near future.

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