Ranting Kenya

CBC has a feature section this week about the Canadian wireless industry. Basically it has got my blood flowing again.

I have some thoughts that I would like to add.

In my own experience, even though data plans and mobile plans are getting cheaper, they aren’t getting cheaper for me. They never have. If I have a plan that “seems” to work for me for the last two years, that plan isn’t offered to new clients anymore. Also, there is no plan available that is similar that I could use for cheaper.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that price is what keeps Canadian cell phone subscribers relatively low. It’s really simple economics. Price goes down, demand/adoption goes up. Even Sony’s Playstation division seems to be learning this finally. Bell, Telus, and Rogers have divided up the customers, and there happy the way it is.

Bell and Telus now offer the Blackberry Pearl, the 8130 to be specific. Now the 8130 is the version that has the GPS. RIM also has another Pearl, the 8120. Now the 8120 and the 8130 are identical in every way except the 8120 has WiFi instead of GPS. Now why wouldn’t those cell carriers want the phone with WiFi built-in? Oh yeah, to sell their insanely expensive data plans. Why should the carriers choose which phone I can get when the carry an identical phone with only one feature that’s different?