The (somewhat) good news for Canadian wireless customers: Rogers has caved and come up with a less horrid plan for the iPhone. You get 6GB for $30, but only if you sign up before Aug 31. And you still have to get a 3-year contract.

The bad news: Bell and Telus are using this opportunity, when all the ill will and reporting is aimed at Rogers, to announce that they’ll now be charging for incoming text messages, not just outgoing. From CTV:

Telus spokesperson Shawn Hall told CTV News the reason for the “moderate charge” is to “recover the cost of the investment we’re making in the network to handle the exponential growth in text messaging.”

Um, hang on. That doesn’t so much make with the, you know, sense. They’ve always charged $0.15 to send a message, right? And judging by their statement, the economics used to work. Let’s say that 5 years ago when there were (I’m making this up; the exact numbers don’t really matter) 1,000,000 text messages send, Bell made $150,000 and paid $150,000 for the infrastructure to support that (again, based on their earlier statement). Presumably that was a combination of the maintenance/operational cost and amortization on the hardware that they set up years before. So let’s say that there are now (again, making this up) 10,000,000 text messages sent; Bell would receive $1,500,000 and, unless texting hardware/software has gotten more expensive (and I’m really betting that it hasn’t), they would pay $1,500,000 to maintain it. Except that Bell will now earn $3,000,000 and pay $1,500,000, for a tidy profit (regardless of what the actual numbers are). Even if Bell has to upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate the additional volume, they can take the up-front hit and net out ahead as the equipment depreciates.

It would appear that Bell and Telus are dressing up a cash grab as a pity play. Oh, you customers love texting so much we’re just going to have to buy some new toys, but we’ll have to charge you extra. Rubbish. You’re a for-profit company, it’s well within your rights to look at the demand in the market and say, “Hey, people love texting so much that we could charge twice as much for it and volume wouldn’t go down by half, so it makes a ton of sense for our bottom line. Let’s do that.” Don’t pretend it’s to improve customer satisfaction. Look at how well that worked for banks with ATM “convenience fees”.

[UPDATE] While it’s unsurprising that the NDP would protest such a consumer-unfriendly fee, when you get the Conservative industry minister fighting you, you’ve probably gone too far.

[tags]rogers, telus, bell, canadian data rates, text messages[/tags]

Apple looks at Rogers, extends its arm, lifts its fist with knuckles pointed up, and emphatically extends its middle finger.

Apple Inc. will not be selling the hotly awaited iPhone in its six Canadian stores when it is released this Friday, leaving Rogers Communications Inc. and its Fido subsidiary to sell the device on their own.

“The iPhone 3G will be available in Canada from Rogers and Fido,” said Simon Atkins, spokesperson for Apple. He declined to elaborate.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company broke the news during a private conference call on Monday evening, according to AppleInsider.com. The website said Apple was “disgusted” with the rates Rogers is charging on the iPhone, which has prompted nearly 50,000 people to join a protest at ruinediphone.com. An Apple store manager last week confirmed to CBCNews.ca that staff were “very disappointed” by the cellphone company’s rates and that Apple was keeping a tally of complaints.

[From the CBC]

.:.

From a purely economic standpoint one always wonders where the artificial “mental” tipping points are with consumers. For example, I’ve always wondered what the average price of a gallon of gas would have to be to curb purchases of SUVs and trucks in North America. It would seem we’ve reached that tipping point. From The Economist:

The Big Three were certain that America’s love affair with go-anywhere, do-anything, gas-guzzling trucks would never end—so much so that both Ford and Chrysler pinned their hopes of recovery on new versions of their bestselling pickups, the F-150 and Dodge Ram respectively. Chrysler even unveiled the new version of the Ram with a cattle-drive through the streets of Detroit in January.

But that conviction has lately been shattered. Figures released this week show that sales of cars and light trucks in America in June fell by 18% compared with the same period a year earlier. Chrysler’s sales were down by a stunning 36%, pushing its market share below 10% for the first time in decades. Ford dropped by 28%. Despite flinging costly rebates at the market, GM’s sales were still down by 18%. Even Toyota, which was widely expected to overtake GM for the first time last month, took a 21% hit, as it struggled both to sell its big Tundra pickup and to keep up with demand for its popular fuel-sipping hybrids. Honda, by contrast, which unlike Toyota and Nissan has never offered Americans chunky pickup trucks, actually increased its sales by 1.1% thanks to a 26% rise in sales of its economical passenger cars.

Of course, this could be a trailing indicator of the overall economic picture in the US, deteriorating due to the credit crunch. However, if you look at auto sales in Canada — where we tend to drive the same cars, but haven’t felt the same of economic shocks of late — you see a different picture. From Reuters:

GM Canada, which was coming off a 20 percent drop in sales in May, said its truck sales, which include sales of SUVs and minivans, skidded 35.3 percent to 14,243, while its car sales fell 11.5 percent to 18,122.

Ford Motor Co. of Canada (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said it sold 22,001 vehicles in June, down 13.7 percent from 25,485 a year earlier. Truck sales decreased 17.7 percent, while car sales fell 2.9 percent.

Chrysler Canada, which has more focus on passenger cars than trucks, bucked the trend set by its Big Three Detroit peers with a 1 percent gain in sales to 22,194 vehicles in June for its 23rd straight month of gains.

Toyota said it set a June sales record as it moved 22,428 units off its lots, a gain of 8.8 percent from a year earlier.

Environmental awareness could also be a factor here, but the rapid increase in gas prices is a more likely culprit.

Interesting to note: the price of cars is not going up, as far as I can tell. Just gas, a secondary good. In fact, as the first article pointed out, Toyota struggled to keep up with the demand for hybrids, which sell at a premium. So it seems clear that gas prices caused this shift; whether the shift is the result of informed decisions or media-fueled panic will become clear later, when (if?) the price of oil peaks and then starts to fall.

[tags]apple, rogers, auto sales, trucks, suvs, toyota, hybrid, gas prices[/tags]