More on the iPhone Data Phones

So Rogers have ‘responded’ to the publics less than favourable attitude to the bad voice/data combination to the iPhone plans and have announced a short term deal to entice iPhone shoppers to commit to Rogers for their data plans.

Rogers are offering 6GB for $30 extra on top of your existing, in-market voice plan.

For mobile internet, daily browsing of facebook twitter, email and adhoc mp3 downloads I think 6GB is more than than enough, its not unlimited but its enough and ample breathing space for the heavy user.

However this plan will not include iPhone’s Visual Voicemail and any essentials like call waiting etc.

If you have had one of those nice unlimited voice plans you kept since 2001 or got given a deal on your voice plan for customer retention you will need to give it up and go for one thats on offer on their website …. this includes EPP and corporate plans too so be very careful before commiting yourselfs to this offer you could end up losing out.

Just read these points and consider them before you setup a tent outside a rogers store tonight

1. Be smart and shop smart
2. Don’t get sucked in by the iPhone fad
3. Don’t forget its just a cell phone
4. iPhone is a design marvel and not new technology!
5. There isn’t much that an iPhone does which other phones that have been out for years can’t do …. yet

Facebook – Windows Mobile Integration

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could relate all your facebook friends to everyone in your outlook contacts and then download up-to-date information to your phone? Well we’re nearly there! There is a great app call Fonebook available to download for free.

The app is installed on your computer and it can automatically download Birthdays, Photos and Status updates directly into your contacts in your Outlook. As far as I can figure out it matches facebook friends to outlook contacts by email but the app allows you to filter all the unmatched friends and assocaite them to Contacts manually. I just found out that you can keep it running in the background and it will automatically run every 10 minutes if you so wish.

Once all your contacts are updated in your outlook you can then sync your phone with your computer to get all the photos and birthday reminders on your phone … pretty cool eh? I haven’t has any issues with the app yet.

iPhone in Canada

Finally the iPhone will touchdown in Canada on July 11th. After scanning most speculation and chatter on the internet about the reason for the delay, I could only think this was a massive political stunt on behalf of Canada’s parasitic wireless telecoms network Rogers Communications. Rogers is Canada’s only GSM cell carrier.

GSM is a section of the wireless telecoms market where the cell phone contains a SIM card which can be removed and placed in another GSM phone. GSM is better technology for world travelers and people that like to change their phones without notifying the network. Today in Canada there are two CDMA carriers (Bell and Telus koodo = Telus by the way)

Parasitic, you might say I’m being harsh but I strongly feel that Canada is long overdue for healthy competition in the GSM market or some decent governing body to stop Canadians getting ripped off for any moderately up-to-date technology. In the UK there is a company called Ofcom (http://www.ofcom.org.uk) which watches over the telecoms network and one of the duties is to ensure a wide range of telecoms services is available to everyone in the UK. This is great as it looks at the big picture and governs the service as a whole … not just on their by own bottom line.