Rogers cellphone Internet: now even less comprehensible

Rogers, in its URL-challenged TellYourStory campaign, is showing people Facebooking pictures with what appears to be wild abandon, given its insane data rates (also see insane data rates, the sequel).

Here's me sending two full-sized 3.2 megapixel photos from my phone.  $160 for 3MB.

If you follow the working URL (not the mixed-case one they show on TV), you get

http://rogers.com/tellyourstory

You find, under Facebook Mobile

Save more when you sign up for an Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan

• Get unlimited mobile on-device browsing for only $7/month!
• Subscribe to the $20 Communicate Value Pack, which includes the Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan

And what do you get?

Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan provides:

• Unlimited on-device mobile Internet access to your favourite social communities like Facebook & MySpace, news, sports and entertainment sites all on the go for one flat monthly fee!
• Access to search the mobile Internet with Yahoo! Search and Google, plus access sites like Yahoo! Canada, Canada.com, Windows Live, The Weather Network, Lavalife Mobile and more!
• Protection against high pay-per-use data charges while surfing the mobile Internet and using community-based services like Facebook.

and not get?

Well, there's no "tethering" (using your phone as a modem, which cost some guy $85,000 on Bell ) and also

Plan is available on select phones only (PDAs such as Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible devices, incurred while tethering (using device as wireless modem for laptop) or incurred using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications* downloaded to your device will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB.

* 3rd party applications are applications like Yahoo! Go or Google Maps. These are non-Rogers applications which can be downloaded to the device and incur data charges at a rate of 5¢/KB.

Things that are not at all clear:

• Can you use this on any Internet-capable Rogers phone?  (UPDATE: See speculation below that this is only for HSDPA phones.)
• Does this cover any web browsing?  Including uploading to a website (e.g. Flickr) using a web form?  Or just listed web sites?
• How the heck do they tell the difference between direcly using "the mobile Internet" and using a forbidden "3rd party" application that accesses the mobile Internet?  If it happens over port 80 and using HTTP, is it "mobile Internet browsing"??
• Is email (SMTP) included?

If they don't permit any phone, that is incredibly lame.  I have spent a fortune on outrageous data and roaming fees on my contract for the practically-new K790.  If they have now decided they only bless the slighly-newer K850 with a reasonable data plan, that's ridiculous.

The phones they show are

• Sony K850
• Motorola Razr2
• LG TU515
• Blackberry Curve (Red)
• LG Shine

The other data plans (which used to be called "navigate mobile internet") are five bucks for five megs (yes, megs) and 3 cents/kilobyte (yes, kilobyte) after, or ten bucks for 10 MB, and 3 cents/KB after.

But wait, it gets MORE confusing!

There's also something called the "Community Access Plan" for $12 a month, which says "Access to MySpace, LookAtMe and Facebook", "unlimited mobile Internet browsing", 500 texts & 50 picture/video messages.

For twenty bucks, you can get 2500 texts (how the hell could you send 2500 texts?), 1000 pic/vid messages, call display, name display, voicemail, and Who Called.

It's interesting that the Internet side of Rogers is Rogers-Yahoo, but there's no mention of Flickr for Rogers cellphones.

What they currently ding me for:

# $20 - 50/1000 Eve/Weekend Plan
# $0.50 - 911 Emergency Svc Access Fee
# $6.95 System Access Fee
# $11 Every Call Value Pack
# $10 Mobile Internet plan

Let's see if I can get this magic $7 or $12 or $20 unlimited value plan pack thing... nope.  (And good luck trying to get the mobile internet plans online at all - they seem to only be orderable through your phone, for unknown reasons.)

So let's get this straight, Rogers is allowed, it is somehow legal, for them to discriminate against my phone.  A phone THEY sold me, for hundreds of dollars, LAST YEAR.  A phone for which they have already charged me something like A THOUSAND DOLLARS in data and roaming charges.

It also apparently isn't required that they automatically put people on a data plan, when they exceed $5 a month of off-plan usage (by say, a factor of 30).

Now I will make the hopeless attempt to contact someone at Rogers who can tell me anything useful.  (It is of course entirely possible that the reason I can't sign up is that they are too incompetent to sync up their ads and plan announcements and self-service site - these are the people who are advertising a URL that doesn't work, after all.)

Dear Rogers: I will never get a phone or contract from you, ever again.  Thanks.

UPDATE 2008-02-18: In which Rogers support tells me things that aren't quite true.

In your recent email, you have informed us that you are unable to find
two packages on our website.

We apologize for the delay in responding to your email. We are currently
receiving higher email volume than normal, and are attempting to answer
all emails as quickly as possible in the order they arrive.

Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience. We are pleased to
inform you that you are [1] able to view the "Unlimited On-Device Mobile
Browsing Plan" under "Voice & Date" and [2] the $20 Communicate Value Pack
under "Value Packs" at
http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-plans/essentials?content10=na
vigate&setLanguage=en&setProvince=BC.

Thank you for choosing Rogers. You are a valued customer and we thank
you for your business.

Regards,
Rogers Online Customer Service

Rogers support doesn't seem to understand the difference between viewing service listings on the open Rogers website, and changing services within my account.

So, within my account... www.rogers.com->Sign in to my account->Manage My Account->Manage My Wireless Services->Update Wireless Essentials

So to [1] "under Voice & Date" [sic].  There is no "Voice & Data" section of Wireless Essentials.

And as to [2] 'the $20 Communicate Value Pack under "Value Packs"'

Not so much.

But wait, if I use my K790 mobile browser (photos to follow)

Mobile Internet... Facebook ¢

"Click here to purchase an unlimited on-device mobile browsing plan"... "Unlimited plan $7 blah blah" so I click on Subscribe Now... Accept...

Unlimited on-device Mobile Browsing Plan

Technical Error.  Please try again later, or contact Customer Care

So in summary: There is no way for me to subscribe to these services from within my account.

UPDATE 2008-02-20: I speculate that when they say "Plan is available on select phones only" what they actually mean is "Plan is available for HSDPA phones only".  The K850 has HSDPA, my K790 does not.  This is all they have to say.  Five letters.  Is that so hard?

What's with this "non-Rogers certified devices" stuff?  If you search their FAQs, there is a only a single result for HSDPA and it's for a different service.  They appear to prefer the term HSPA, there are a few FAQs matching that, all under "Rogers Vision".  It appears that Vision is the "things you can do with video" catchall in their "stuff you can do" list.  Facebook Mobile and MySpace Mobile are separate entries in that list.  Their FAQ about HSPA and Vision says

Rogers Vision is a suite of applications and services available on HSPA devices that run on the HSPA network, the fastest and most advanced wireless network in Canada.

If both "unlimited browsing" and Vision are for HSDPA only, Rogers should offer free upgrades to those of us who got expensive EDGE phones from them just last year.

Currently they are "offering" the low-low price of $350 to upgrade to the K850, with three year extension, or $400 with two-year extension.  (The base price of the phone unlocked is about $500 from Sony Style, and I'm not including Rogers PITA $50 mail-in rebate baloney.)

So in other words "thanks for buying a locked K790 from us on 3-year contract, as a reward we're willing to offer you a K850i with no discount whatsoever, with a three year contract extension".  Your call is important to us...

You remember that part where I said I'm never getting a Rogers contract with a locked phone again?  Gosh, how could I turn my back on them when they reward my business with... well, nothing, as far as I can tell.  Unless extra costs and charges on top of extra costs and charges counts as a reward.

UPDATE 2008-02-25: If you go on-device you'll find that "UR Services" is now "UR Services - MY5" and if you try to get a mobile Internet plan, the $5/5MB and $10/10MB options are now gone.  The only option is the $7 unlimited plan which, if you have a K790 or presumably any other non-approved, non-HSDPA phone, it won't let you sign up for, it says "Technical Error".

If you had an existing plan (I have the $10/10MB one) it appears to continue to exist, for the moment, anyway.

UPDATE 2008-02-26: Rogers says I can't sign up for the $7 plan, but they can sign me up for the $20 plan.  I'm not really clear on this, since I thought the $20 plan was a superset of the $7 plan and also includes unlimited mobile browsing.

Includes:

    # NEW! Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing*

* Plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing... Plan is available on select phones only...

So do they mean they'll put me on the $20 plan, but only give me the rest of the plan

# 2500 Sent Text Messages
# 1000 Sent Picture/Video Messages
# Voice Mail
# Call Display
# Name Display
# WhoCalled

WITHOUT unlimited mobile browsing??

Here's are the relevant parts of their email:

We are able to add the $20 Communicate Value Pack to your account for
you [if you wish]. ...

You will not see the $7 vision Unlimited on-device Mobile Browsing Plan
as your phone is not a vision capable phone.

My cellphone future holds an unlocked phone, and a return to pay-as-you-go.  No more locked phones and contracts for me.

Comments

[Phil]

I wonder what sort of business case Rogers uses to justify it's EDGE network, if it doesn't offer any plans that take advantage of it? I also just purchased a k790A (on eBay) in the vain hope that I could sign up for some sort of data plan, but as you point out, the only one available is for HSDPA devices. Rogers blows, and they are the only game in town. *sigh*

[Donovan Hill]

I just purchased a Nokia e61 (It's HDSPA 2100 - the European standard - and EDGE 800/850/1800/1900). Does anyone have an inkling what data plan I can use with it for email?