Re: Difference between WirelessInternet and Surf,download and Play?

Called Fido today.

My $5.00 for 500kb is no longer available. (but I am grand fathered).

The Play&Surf is limited to WAP within Fido's portal.

GPRS packages (the cheapest is now $12 for 1 meg) is not limited and you
can access any IP on the internet, check your email via POP and send emails
via SMTP.

So the $5.00 for 2mb Surf&Play is just a package that allows you to access
Fido's portal and Fido approved ringtones etc. AKA: Useless.

Hehe... I'm in the same situation - I have the $5 for 500Kb grand
fathered plan and I really don't want to give it up now. I actually
tried to have both plans on my account but that was a no go from Fido.
However, you can try out the wap and it will count towards your half
meg per month.

The surf, download and play is not totally useless, you can actually
browse the web with it as long as you can set a proxy in your browser.
However, all the other ports are closed so if you need to use a IM
program (like I do) then you're SOL.

It was really funny when the CSR offered to upgrade me to the 1Mb for
$12... I guess they don't grasp the concept of unit price going down as
you go up in volume.

I may be (slightly) wrong here but I believe Canada has the highest
data rates in the world, and yes, I've been to quite a few countries.
I was paying $1/Mb on a pay-as-you-go-plan in Europe. Petition anyone?



JF Mezei wrote:
> Called Fido today.
>
> My $5.00 for 500kb is no longer available. (but I am grand fathered).
>
> The Play&Surf is limited to WAP within Fido's portal.
>
> GPRS packages (the cheapest is now $12 for 1 meg) is not limited and you
> can access any IP on the internet, check your email via POP and send emails
> via SMTP.
>
> So the $5.00 for 2mb Surf&Play is just a package that allows you to access
> Fido's portal and Fido approved ringtones etc. AKA: Useless.

R. wrote:
> It was really funny when the CSR offered to upgrade me to the 1Mb for
> $12... I guess they don't grasp the concept of unit price going down as
> you go up in volume.

Their argument would be:

With the $5.00 plan, doing 1 megabytes would cost you:

$5.00 for the first 500kb, and then 500 * 0.03 for the remaining 500 kb =
$20 total. So to them the $12 deal is good.

Also remember that since Rogers became Fido's master, any competitive
prices Fido had have been removed/raised.

When the federal government allowed Rogers to buy Fido, it also implicitely
decided to widthdraw its policy of competition in the wireless field. As a
result, there is no longer any need to limit the bandwidth given to the big
bad monopolies just in case a new entrant would show up.

Perhaps if the networks had more bandwidth, data services wouldn't be at
such a premium (since data can take up a lot of the bandwidth).

> I was paying $1/Mb on a pay-as-you-go-plan in Europe. Petition anyone?

Why a petition ? Rogers only needs to compete against Bell/Telus. And Bell
only needs to compete against Telus and Rogers. So If Bell has high data
rates, Rogers need not lower their rates, And vice-versa.

Fido had a vision originally of creating a huge marketplace by offering
affordable rates. The big bad guys don't have vision. They have quarterly
financial reports to present to the press/banks and there is no room in
there to have vision of creating bigger market for data by lowering the rates.