I’ll caveat this post. This is a stream of consciousness rant. Perhaps it contains some info you didn’t know though, maybe you will get some use from my math.
The problem is, I realized today that I spend $50 each month for my wife and I to have internet access on our iPhones. Slow, unreliable, specific task based internet.
We’re with a discount carrier, Fido, who is owned by Rogers. For the sake of comparison, I’ll use Rogers’ numbers. Their cost is even higher, their mobile subscribers will pay $35 per month for 1gb of data. When you compare this to internet at home is where it begins to get outrageous. A Rogers subscriber at home will pay $25.99 per month for 2gb of data. 25% less money for 50% more data.
If I were a Rogers subscriber, I would pay a total of $95.99 each and every month for internet at home and on two iPhones. Again, slow, unreliable, specific task based internet is the large chunk of that. You see, I can’t use the more expensive internet on my phone for lots of things. Peer-to-peer is out, any video beyond YouTube is out and no Flash based sites (that’s a huge chunk of data transfer gone.) I won’t use FTP, I’m not downloading much music over iTunes and I’m not chatting all day. I’m using this internet in quick bursts. Check my email. Look up an address. Find that address on Google Maps. Squash a barroom argument about what the capital of Arkansas is. It’s Little Rock.
Why are the carriers so expensive? I am not a tech person, maybe for some reason it is exorbitantly expensive to send that data over the air. I can’t believe that’s the case though when I look at the profit. Rogers’ wireless data revenue accounted for 20% of their wireless revenue, and that’s only going up. My math has never been great, but I calculate their profit around 48%. Somehow, people are buying into internet that is less useful and more expensive than the internet they have at home.
We seem to be accepting that this is just the cost of downloading wikipedia entries in the bar.
I’m now calculating all the costs of communication in my house, including television, VOIP, internet, cell. I’m over $300 per month so far, so I think I’ll stop counting before I start thinking of all the Mexican vacations I’ve wasted.
