The “Open Moko” is much more interesting!
http://openmoko.com/

The Open Moko runs on “free as in freedom” software that you’re free to modify if you wish. You can also “hack” the hardware and it’s all quite legal. There will never be any “digital locks”.

It will make idiotic laws like the DMCA in the U.S. and Prentice’s Bill C-61 irrelevant. All kinds of little businesses can spring up who will legally be able to make changes to people’s Open Moko phones.

If our governments are going to give the full weight of the law to protect digital locks then it’s time to switch to software and electronic hardware that doesn’t have locks in the first place.

http://www.itinfusion.ca/wireless/my-best-iphone-rate-plan-guess/

I wasn’t too far off I don’t think. I would have been very surprised to get unlimited data, but I was hoping that they could at least drop the rates a bit…

Obviously $30 for unlimited (a la AT&T) is currently the holy grail. I certainly wasn’t expecting that… but maybe $50 or $60 for unlimited?

http://foo.ca/wp/2008/06/11/enough-to-make-me-leave-telus/

Sadly, the iphone data plans aren’t a whole lot better, but they’re about as good as I’d expect from Rogers. With Telus I have a $15 unlimited data plan that’s really unlimited; I don’t have to restrict myself to facebook or google maps, or what have you. If Telus and Bell and others are doing it, why isn’t Rogers? Oh right, exclusivity. People want the iPhone, and they’d happily pay a dollar a minute to have it, as well as be locked in for three years. It’s silly.

Did you send your message to Apple as well?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you more explicitly what outrages me (and, note, I don’t and didn’t have any plans to buy an iphone): as someone who has been trying to harness technology in useful and socially constructive ways, with success or not (eg: librivox - making knowledge free and accessible in a new format; atwater media project - getting kids to discover the wonder of creation; datalibre - urging the government to make data about our lives available so that we can help improve our country; earideas - bringing intellectually stimulating audio to a wider audience), I am frustrated that the tools of innovation are getting blocked by a monopolistic, greedy pricing plan.

i don’t know what people can do with web enabled mobile devices, but there’s a good case that it will be a significant, maybe revolutionary change in how we interact with information. Certainly that is the impression i get from the bits of interesting tech reading I’ve been doing of late, the art that’s made me think most, and discussions I’ve had with people either thinking about or actually working in the interesting mobile space. and I (probably many others) have an intuition that the changes will make the web look archaic.

now, given my interest in technology has little to do with geewhiz gadgetry, and more with trying to do interesting/useful/constructive things with it, I am still pissed off at rogers. why?

because canada - or at least my canada - has been excluded from exploring and experimenting with the mobile web because data plans are exorbitant, and totally out of whack with the rest of the world. so if there are interesting and exciting things that might come out of the mobile web, the sorts of things I’d like to see (whatever they might be) or I would like to work on, they are not going to come out of canada because it’s just too expensive. they won’t come from friends of mine, they won’t come from me.

that sucks.

the buzz around the iphone/rogers plan (in my circles) was: finally, canada (rogers) will be forced to make reasonable data plans because there’s a big business to be had selling these gadgets. which is good for canadian gadget nuts, and at least encouraging for canadian innovation, because for the first time we won’t be totally excluded from maybe the most important area of communications innovation in the coming decade.

so, spoiled rich kids aside, that’s my concern, and why i was pissed at rogers. because we’ve been waiting for this innovation space to open, and finally thought it would, but it didn’t.

…

People get outraged about things that the perceive to have impacts on their own lives, or the lives they would like to live. I find it interesting to list the issues I have complained about over the past few years via email to governments etc. the ones I can remember include: copyright, renaming Park Avenue, the interdiction against the flower lady on Bernard Street, data plans. Probably there were others; but basically I’ve complained about encroachments on the actual place where I live, and on the space where I work.

Now perhaps I should get more pissed off about other things, but what can you do. One cannot manufacture outrage, it’s either there or it isn’t; if it’s there, it’s there for a reason, and probably worth doing something about.

also, for an elaboration on some of the reasons why i am pissed at rogers, and see:
http://hughmcguire.net/2008/06/29/what-are-you-worth/#comment-6364