Codejunkie

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Cell: Cheapest cell phone deal (in Ontario anyway)
Fri, 19 Sep 2008

We all know cell phone plans are bad. Really bad. And doubly so in Canada.. but here is the best way to go for a cheap 'emergency batphone' approach.

First, lets break down the norm or what I assume is the norm..

A monthly plan is probably about $20 base for most people; my plan is some $20/200 thing, but I imagine whatever airtime and feature set the sweet spot is about $20 per plan. <conspiracy whisper>I'll tell you why I think that in a second</conspiracy> Furthermore, there is the bogus system access fee which is about $6 or $7 per month, plus any features, and the inevitable taxes. So we're all probably on the dole for about $30 per month, or more. (And on the phone when I was bugging them about the system access fee, the droid did in fact tell me it was to pay the government for 911 support, and of course its come out over the years this is not true. Thankfully, some cell resellers like Koodu are ditching that fee.)

I think this is the telco sweet spot, since consider.. if they can get you for about $30/mo 'or so', thats about $360 per year 'or so'; ie: About a buck a day, which just seems to convenient a number, no?

Pay as you go

I never much looked into pay as you go plans since essentially you put money into a credit pool and any airtime you use is charged against that. If you run out, fine, you can top it up.. but the airtime costs more than you'd like. If you don't run out however, the real kicker is they 'expire' the credit - usually after only 30 days. Absolutely territory we don't want to tread in as consumers. So if you're kicking in $20/month of expiry cash, you're not really ahead much on the regular monthly plans. But to note -- on pay as you go you get some free features (call display etc), and you have no system access fee (an immediate savings of $6/$7 per month). The big negative is the expiring money, and if you get voicemail then the voicemail counts against your minutes (ouch!), so usually you don't want voicemail on such a plan.

The deal however is .. Rogers will sell you a $100 voucher for airtime, that will expire after one year. They don't seem to advertise it much, and its REALLY hard to find on their website. I only managed to locate it by accident from a few links in obscure old forum postings. In the end, any Rogers Wireless store should be able to sell you a $100 voucher and apply it to your account. They want to sell you "top ups" instead, which always last no more than 30 days. But the "$100 voucher" (that exact phrase :) is good for a year.

Working it out..

So now consider; $100 per year.. thats what, $8/month? Thats a hell of a lot better than $30 a month, but you don't get as much of course. Hence why this is a fantastic 'batphone' emergency plan, or for people who don't yak a lot.

You can pick from a series of plans, but in this case for an emergency phone for someone I selected .. 25c/min for the first 5 mins of a call, then 15c/min thereafter. Not too bad. All told we could say the $100 will get about 400 minutes of airtime on short calls, or possible maybe 500 minutes if it goes awhile. No system access fee, no weird taxes, no paying for features..

I mean, $8/month for cell phone. Nice.

[ Category: / technology / mobile ] [link] [Comments]

Tech: Cellphone data plans and how they totally suck in Canada
Fri, 11 Jan 2008

I've often ranted about how incredibly terrible our data plans are in the Great White. I mean, not just bad, but actively terrible .. to the point it probably harms the market as a whole. We're often told that in the US one can score unlimited data for their PDA or smartphone for $30 or $50 a month, where in Toronto you cannot even get unlimited anymore .. and each MB is doled out pennies at a time. In my heart, I know it is simply because even geeks aren't aware how much data they consume in an average normal browsing day, and non-geeks have no idea how to even measure the information. ie: Data plans here are measured in how many Megabytes (MB) you get for $x -- a really big expensive plan might get you 25MB for the month .. and if you're browsing someones photos, you might be pulling down a single megabyte every few photos worth. So an hours browsing, or maybe just a couple youtube videos, and you're down a hundred bucks. _brutal_

Pretty much every Canadian whose looked into it is miffed. This one lad has written a pretty fine article about it, so take a peek:

Angry Oshawa Pilot

BTW, I just have to add -- why is it that writers so love the phrase "high seas" -- where are the "low seas?"

[ Category: / technology / mobile ] [link] [Comments]

Mobile: 2008 will be an interesting year..
Tue, 06 Nov 2007

Its really been a known thing for a few days or a week now, but the official announcement is out -- Goggle has launched Android, its Linux based mobile phone OS platform. This is the foundation with no house on top, but if it proves to be a robust foundation (solid, flexible enough to be ported to many devices, easy to lock down for telcos and easy to develop applications for), it could be a good thing. It'll be fun to watch the next few days as people inevitably compare it to established stacks like Apple's iPhone has (ie: an OS with a relatively complete application suite and a year head start) and the traditional smartphones OSes (Symbian, Palm/ACCESS and Windows offerings.)

As usual, Michael Mace has a very good article on things here -- I really love the closing lines:

It's going to use open source and alliances to suck the profitability out of anybody who creates a proprietary island that it can't target.
It'll be interesting to see if and how Google applies this principle to the upcoming frequency auction in the US.
Or to anyone else who gets in its way.

[ Category: / technology / mobile ] [link] [Comments]

Palm: The stats on smartphones
Thu, 19 Apr 2007

(While I am pretty darned sleep deprived I think I'm reading things right ;)

Being a developer for various sundry mobile platforms, I like to try and guess where things are going, and gauge where to spend my efforts, and really .. I like to see what new gadgets are out there, and fondle as many as possible. Its been a dry couple of years for us gadgetheads .. the sheer variety of toys we've seen before hasn't happened for awhile - no more Handera Inc's my dear friends. We need some shakedowns .. some rolling screens, not just GPS-in-everything. We're tough to please nowadays.

October 2008
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

October 2008
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

October 2008
Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31