Mischievous Ramblings II

Rogers Wireless Bait-and-Switch on Canada/US iPhone Data Plan

On 2010.02.04, Rogers Wireless announced new data plans for the iPhone.  Special data plans, because they eliminated data roaming charges in the US.

A wonderful thing if you cross the border regularly -- as I do.  So far as I know, these are the first cross-border data plans available, not only in Canada, but anywhere!

Can you imagine my delight?

We switched immediately, giving up the 6GB plan ($30/month) we'd signed up for when we got the iPhones on launch day -- knowing we'd never get them back at that price.  But frankly, Sara rarely uses even 200MB and I usually use about 500MB, so I signed her up at 500MB ($35) and me at 1GB ($40).  For $5 a month (and reduced data headroom that we don't seem to need), we got free data roaming in the US!

And it was sweet.  No more lobotomy at Lynden.  No more checking anxiously to see when the Rogers 3G came back on the way north (sometimes not until we're north of the border, actually).  Free data!  Data wants to be free!

Being a geek, I had to see what would happen if I tried tethering my MacBook Pro while I was in the US.  A good friend suggested it would not work because tethering had to be enabled at the cell tower level via provisioning.  I figured that, since I'd had to modify the phone (Rogers downloaded an additional/alternate firmware or carrier provisioning bundle when I asked them to turn tethering on), it should work.

At least it was worth a try.

But when I attempted it, I got this message:

 

 

OK, no big deal.  No tethering in the US -- that makes me just like any other poor iPhone user attached to the AT&T network (which, BTW, I agree sucks compared to Rogers -- data transfers are slower, tend to drop out more, and it generally doesn't achieve the level of "service" I'm used to getting).

Unfortunately, I got that very same message the next time I tried to tether while over town.  Dang.

I assumed (dangerous word) that Rogers had accidentally turned off my tethering while changing my data plan.  So I called support.

After three calls, I've discovered that it wasn't an accident.  On my first call, customer service told me that they couldn't enable tethering on my plan so I'd have to call technical support.  On my second call, tech support told me that tethering wasn't available on my plan and then out-waited me when I asked for a manager to explain the discrepancy between what they were telling me and the web site.  On my third call, customer support told me that I'd have to upgrade from the 1GB on Smartphones, Canada & US One Rate Data Plan for $40/month to the Mobile Internet Flex-Rate, Canada & US One Rate Data Plan at $60/month.

After some back and forth, she offered to "open a ticket" to find out why my plan doesn't offer tethering.  She said that I'd get a callback in 3-5 business days with either: a solution to adding tethering to my existing plan; or "other options".

I'm betting those "other options" are limited to "pay us $20 more a month".

Despite Rogers' web site claiming:

Tethering is the use of your phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet from your computer. For a limited time, if you subscribe to a data plan which includes at least 1GB of data transmission, and if you have a compatible device, you may use tethering as part of the volume of data included in your plan at no additional charge. Tethering cannot be used with data plans of less than 1GB.

I can't tether.

Fall Convocation 2008: Simon Fraser University

(Photo: Simon Fraser University)

Last month, I received my MBA from Simon Fraser University. My family persuaded me to attend convocation, although my previous experience (BACS, UC Santa Cruz, 1983) had left me disinclined to attend

I am so very grateful that I was persuaded. After gowning, lining up, precessing, and waiting (since there were no doctorates to be awarded, we MBAs were the first of about 400 students to reach our seats), we were sitting and listening to what I expected would be the traditional boring platitudes about how wonderful we were, how fantastic our experience at school had been, and how we would now proceed to change the world, preferably through good capitalist means.

I had forgotten that I was in Canada.

Dr. Michael Stevenson, President of the university, gave a fantastic speech:

The movement over the last quarter century to lessen the size and cost of the state, and to liberate the market from bureaucratic regulation and inefficiency, has been characterized by many contradictory trends. For example, the promise of less government has been undercut by the continued growth if redirection of government spending; the promise of the free market has been undercut by “irrational exuberance” of poorly regulated capital markets; the assurance of better services has been undercut by the health and safety threats in deregulated water, power and food systems or the increased visibility of homelessness and drug addiction following the deinstitutionalization of mental health care. Domestic “wars” on drugs or crime are as ineffective in achieving their announced objectives as the international War on Terror. And claims to political superiority grounded in the defense of human rights and civil liberties are devalued by arbitrary arrest and the abrogation of legal rights in defense of “homeland security,” and by the more general pressure to liberate executive power from judicial restraint.

For reasons like these, the events of the last few weeks underline the limits of American and North American domination, whether economic, military or political. The world is a much different place than it was even a decade ago, when we celebrated the advent of a new millennium.

As new university graduates you know the world is a more complicated and dangerous place. You know that this is not only a question of the rapid restructuring of economic and political power in the global market and international order. It is also a question of the life of the planet itself…of fundamental changes in climate and ecosystems, the intensified risks of natural disaster and reduced biodiversity, and the hugely complex issues of adaptation to and mitigation of environmental change.

Despite the magnitude of these challenges, and despite the rhetorical drum-beat of electioneering calls for change, the political response is so far not encouraging. Governing and opposition parties still vie for the embrace of lower taxes, knowing apparently that most of us will favour a marginal increase in private consumption over any collective investment in public infrastructure or social services. Courageous leadership on climate issues is the exception rather than the rule, and it is met with opportunistic opposition to carbon taxes, unless they be levied on someone other than ourselves. Public investment in the arts as a means to building the creative economy and improving the quality of life is opposed as a sop to cultural elites and a subsidy to work that affronts the sensibilities of ordinary men and women, as great art tends to do when first produced. And public investments in education, which are so urgently required in order to rethink the fundamentals of our ways of life and to redefine long term strategies for social change, are increasingly targeted to the short-term demands of the existing labour market and to the shortest possible return on investment through the commercialization of research.

Serious discussion of these and other issues is muted by the forces governing our electoral politics. In the age of mass communications simple plurality, first-past-the-post, electoral systems force convergence on issues and differentiation on image. Trash advertising and spin, segmentally targeted to different “demographics,” manipulate political sentiment and undermine rational discussion.

This is a different place.

Lifestyle Choices

Sara and I went to the White Spot today.  In the middle of the menu was the food category "Lifestyle Choices."

All I could think of was people ordering  "I'll have an entree of heterosexual serial monogamy, extra spicy, with a side of polyamorous bisexuality," or "smoking, high-fat food served with television and lethargy."

Snow!

Somehow I thought this would only happen once a winter :-)

Woke this morning to a four to six inch blanket of white on the world.  Slept in, because if there's that much snow, I don't need to get the garbage out for collection.

Arose and dressed for the weather and went to shovel the front.  I learned last storm (just after US Thanksgiving) that it's important to shovel snow the day it falls.  Today I may have jumped the gun, because it's still falling, but it was easy to get the snow off the stairs and the driveway (and the first six or eight feet of the street) while it was still loose and light.  There may be more to do later.

In the meantime, it's quiet and dim, with small snow falling fast outside.  Biscuits are in the oven.