Below is the letter I sent to several Rogers and Apple executive in an effort to perhaps educate people who think these data plans are acceptable, I've made a few revisions since the original in case anyone decides to repost this elsewhere. The only thing I ask is that you cite the original source here at ehMac.
Quote:
The Reality of Data Usage on the iPhone
According to Rogers, a 400MB data plan with 150 minutes and 9PM evenings is a "HIGH-Value plan." What I'll attempt to outline below is how unrealistic the data portion of the Rogers plans really are. What you'll find below is a list of Rogers highly exaggerated usage statements, followed by a few things left out of their documentation.
What will 400MB of data allow a customer to do? The first thing one might note is that Rogers’ entire data usage statement is little more than a conditional statement. While many people I know were ecstatic at the prospect of getting an iPhone, none struck me as interested in only e-mail "OR" only browsing the net. Forget for a moment the exaggerated usage numbers Rogers cites, the entire basis of their usage statement is not based on realistic usage patterns of the iPhone. Let’s dig a little deeper into the realities of data consumption in an iPhone world.
E-mail
I did a quick tally of my Gmail account, which is currently sitting at 274MB used. Contained within is a mix of 6,570 emails of which approximately 65% are text and 35% are HTML. The average size of a single text e-mail is 40 kilobytes. An HTML e-mail can exceeded a megabyte in size by the time images and CSS are loaded. Let’s assume in this example the average HTML e-mail is only 500 kilobytes in size.
On average I receive 400 e-mails per month on my primary personal account. I won't pretend to say I've spoken to a large audience to see how similar my results are, but I did speak to a few friends and they all reported relatively similar numbers. Even my wife who rarely uses a computer outside of work receives an average of 200 e-mails per month and she's not someone who would be interested in an iPhone, nor would she be in the target demographic. So here's the math:
(140 HTML e-mail * 500KB) + ( 260 TEXT e-mail * 40KB) = (70MB + 10.4MB)
= 80MB per month in e-mail
So 400 mixed type or 2000 text only e-mail messages totals slightly over 80MB per month. Rogers states you can send 200,000 e-mails in a month, but based on these calculations you’d reach your 400MB limit on the 1,991st message. Keep in mind this calculation only includes received e-mail and does not take into account any e-mail you send.
RUNNING TOTAL: 80MB per month
Web Pages
According to a report cited by Rogers spokesperson Elizabeth Hamilton, the size of an average webpage is 130KB. The link she provided actually leads to a more comprehensive and recent report which states the average web page size is now 310.4KB, and expected to exceed 385KB by the end of 2008. Given a median page size of 350KB, this equates to 1,143 pages per month, far short of the 3,100 Rogers claims.
The problem with both these reports is they are an average of many websites, including many that are not popular. The sites people visit most often can be found on the Alexa Top 500 websites list. To demonstrate, I pulled up my Facebook profile, which is pretty minimalist as far as Facebook pages go. After adding up the size of all 120 items on the page, the total was 994.7KB. This does not include the traffic required for DNS lookups, or communication back and forth to the web server requesting each of the 120 items. Next I pulled up my niece’s page, who is big into Facebook. Her page included a whopping 757 items. I wasn't about to count the total size of all those items, but to make my point, the profile.php file alone was 1.8MB.
The most popular websites people frequently visit are not those of low bandwidth, but rather high bandwidth sites like Facebook which far exceed a 120KB in size. For this example, lets use the relatively moderate page size of 350KB. On average I visit 10 to 15 websites daily, 4 of which I visit multiple times throughout the day. I don't have an exact number, but if I had to guess, I'd say between all sites, I view an average of 200 pages each day. I’d estimate 15% of my daily surfing occurs on my iPod Touch, and that it’s reasonable to assume one would use their iPhone more as there is no Wi-Fi limiting factor. Given a slight bump is usage let’s say I surf an average of 40 pages per day over the course of the average month:
350KB average page size * 40 pages * 30 days = 420MB per month
Based on just 20% usage I’ve exceeded my 400MB cap just surfing the web. If I surf just 5 more pages per day that number jumps to 473MB.
RUNNING TOTAL: 500MB per month
Photo Attachments
1,360 photo attachments would indicate the average photo size was only 294KB. Most cameras are 5-10 megapixels these days, and have file sizes ranging from just over 1MB up to and in excess of 8MB. The iPhone’s built in 2 megapixel camera will have a file size relatively close to the 294KB Rogers claims, but I think it rather dubious to assume all images will be coming directly from the iPhone camera. Why, might you ask? Well, my question to Rogers is where are these photo attachments going to or coming from? The iPhone does not currently support Multimedia Messaging Service, so what is Rogers trying to state here? Are they talking about sending pictures via e-mail that are taken on the iPhone? Are they copied to your phone from an iPhoto or Aperture library via iTunes? If so, even photos of 1MB in size, or 3 megapixels, would very quickly use up that 400MB per month. Making the assumption Rogers is talking about photo’s taken with the iPhone, lets say we view or upload 40 photos per month to and from our Mobile Me website at 294KB per image.
40 photos * 284KB = 12MB per month
RUNNING TOTAL: 512MB per month
The You-Tube factor
Rogers failed to mention the fact that YouTube is a part of the iPhone product. They also failed to mention how many videos a person could watch per month. A conservative estimate for the average size of a YouTube video is between 2MB and 5MB per minute. To demonstrate this example, let’s say we watch 10 five-minute videos per month at an average bit rate of 3MB per minute.
(10 movies * 5 minutes each * 3 MB per minute) = 150MB per month
At this rate, is it really surprising that Rogers would leave this feature out of their data usage information?
RUNNING TOTAL: 662MB per month
iTunes Application Store
Here's where we start getting into the real unknowns. How much data would the average person use per month from the iTunes store? Lets take a wild guess and say 20MB per month. That brings our total data usage to:
RUNNING TOTAL: 682MB per month
Mobile Me
One of the huge benefits of the iPhone is the add-on services available like Mobile Me. The push technology employed will undoubtedly reduce the amount of data coming to and from the phone for e-mail, but will be offset by data from applications like Calendar, Contacts and third-party add-ons. While we don't know how much this will equate to, I can make an educated guess based on the current Gmail sync utility on my BlackBerry, which clocks in at about 8-12MB per month.
RUNNING TOTAL: 694MB per month
Third Party Applications
Without a doubt thousands of third party applications will be made available for the iPhone now that the iPhone SDK is out. The model for this program is superb and will be nothing less than a great success. Let’s take a single application we know will be released for the iPhone, Spore, a solo and online game. More traditional online games back in the days of dial-up required at minimum, a 28.8Kbps modem, which equates to 3.6KB per second or 216KB per minute. Even if the game transmitted one half that amount of data, that’s still a whopping 6.89MB per hour of game play. Let’s consider 3 such activities at 4 hours usage each per month. That equates to another 84MB total.
RUNNING TOTAL: 778MB per month
Google Maps
While I don't believe Google Maps will see as much use as e-mail and web browsing, it is fully integrated into many iPhone applications, and offers some very powerful features. While I don't know what the actual data usage on an iPhone with Google Maps is, I do know that each time you load a map section on a BlackBerry it’s 195KB to 205KB of data. If I change to satellite view it balloons to 500KB to 700KB per screen load. Where does one even begin to guess how much data Google Maps could chew up? Simply using this feature once or twice a month could easily devour as much as 50MB of data. Luckily the data package on my BlackBerry is unlimited so running this test didn’t cost me a fortune. I don't think its unreasonable to think that with all its integration, Google Maps won’t be used at least 4 or 5 times a month. This could easily set you back another 100MB, just through minimal use of one bandwidth intensive application.
RUNNING TOTAL: 878MB per month
WiFi Hot Spots
Rogers claims that to help conserve data usage over 3G, iPhone customers have free access to ALL Rogers Wi-Fi hot spots. Well I hate to burst bubbles, but there is ONE Rogers Wi-Fi hot spot in the entire city in which I reside. Now I realize bigger centers may have better access than that, but had I wanted to use Wi-Fi hot spots, I'd just keep using my iPod Touch. If this was how the iPhone was designed to be used, there would be little point in having 3G data capabilities. Apple could have saved time and money, creating an iPhone that works like early model WinCE/Palm OS phones.
Conclusion
As you can see we are already at 773MB data usage per month using very conservative numbers. Myself and many others believe data use will be significantly higher than illustrated here. The fact is, people do not want to worry about how many YouTube videos they watch or whether they dare use Google Maps.
Rogers, I'm one of many potential customers you are missing out on because your plans are unreasonable. Most of us are not so much arguing the price per month at that $60-$90 dollar price point, but rather the value received for the amount paid. You have strong competition in Canada, and don't kid yourself as your GSM monopoly won't last past 2012. All the CDMA providers in Canada are slowly making the transition over to GSM whether they've officially announced it or not. Your marketing intelligence should already be aware of this. I currently work for your competition, and was going to buy an iPhone from you. What does that say about this product? Your prices?
To Apple, myself and many others, over 33,000 in fact, strongly encourage you to put continued pressure on Rogers to make the plan suit the phone. The iPhone as you well know was not designed to be crippled by hard capped data plans. At least one other Telco; the only one with a plan worse than Rogers has heard the voice of the customer and made the change to unlimited data. Both Bell and Telus offer unlimited data plans on all smart phones. I don't expect to ever see a CDMA iPhone, but if those two and other, smaller CDMA providers in Canada can offer unlimited data, why is it Rogers refuses?
I will also be posting this on several news forums in an effort to educate and combat the highly misleading information Rogers is currently giving out to customers.
Please fix this!
Regards,
PS. This e-mail message is 316KB in size
Edit History
7/05/08 at 02:22 PM. Reason: "Sent e-mail": Thanks shogun 308 for pointing
that out
7/05/08 at 02:34 PM. Reason: Revision of opening statement: Thanks hugerobots!
That's very well thought out and composed, and the truly sad thing is that what you mentioned in your paragraph above the letter is probably true: the executives you sent it to probably won't read past the first paragraph, if at all. That's a shame.
Already all major TV networks in Canada have covered the story including Radio-Canada's Téléjournal yesterday night.
All the coverage I've heard and read clearly highlight consumers educated complaints that Rogers' offer in not competitive, especially to what is available south of the border.
Hear, hear to the Web 2.0 that allows some power shift to happen... ;-)
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I agree that the subject has been covered thoroughly in your letter, but I would like to point out why you supersede your message to us that they may not read past the first portion.
In order to spark interest from the reader, you'll have to understand that the reader needs to want to read it. By way of insinuating that their employees are any of those incompetent traits warrants a quick toss over the shoulder.
Lure your audience in with rational, cautious suggestion, then hammer them with clear decisive arguments. They already know people are not happy with the limited data package as you mention by way of media outlets. Rather than drudge through the inevitable scorn in your letter, why not coax them into believing what you're trying to say is legitimate.
The whole point of this 'movement' (if it can even be called that by the consumer), is to inform the supplier that their services are inadequate. Not that their business is in no way able to supply the quality of demand their products are shelving. It's already evident that the product will sell, which is their bottom line. Kicking and screaming is not something they'll be kind enough to oblige with smile on their face.
I would like to point out why you supersede your message to us that they may not read past the first portion.
Good point, and well taken. I guess when started writing this it was not with the same tone and intention that it ended up once i started writing out the facts. Had I reviewed that top portion prior to sending, it would have had a different tone.
I guess that's water under the bridge now. However, if this information can be used to help educate others as to how truly awful Rogers plans are and convince a few others to hold out, then it'll have served some purpose.
Wow. Thanks so much for reporting this research and findings. It serves as a good indicator for the trends in data usage in the 3G world. It is clear that Rogers is completely out to lunch with their calculations and consumer expectations for their so called "value" packages.
Great, well-researched letter.
I've been writing back and forth with Rogers customer service over the last week, explaining to them the error of their ways.... which I'm sure they're all well aware of.
I find that what they keep responding is the statement "not all carriers worldwide are offering unlimited data". In fact, the last correspondence I received, regurgitated stats about a data cap in France. Actually I will quote them here:
"The majority of carriers offering iPhone 3G worldwide do not have
unlimited plans for this device. Some carriers have implemented a ?soft
cap? so the plan is not truly ?unlimited?. For example, in France the
soft cap is 500MB where we have a plan that includes 4 times that amount
in your bucket. Unlimited plans could end up costing you more for what
you do not use.
Based on reports that the average usage for the first generation iPhone
was less than 100MB per month, our iPhone 3G plans more than accommodate
the vast majority of customers. Rogers and Fido customers get 4 times
the data on our $60 entry-level plan (400 MB) and 20 times the data on
our most comprehensive plan. "
What I had to reiterate in my follow-up to this email was that:
a) 400mb *would* be fine for my uses, given that I use wifi most of the time
BUT
b) To call this $60 base plan a "Value Pack" is not only misleading, but is practically extortion given the fact that once you've added the hidden fees (saf + 911) and have added a reasonable amount of TXTs and Caller ID ($15 value add-on) you're already looking at a bill just over $93 per month... for 3 YEARS (and you'd better pray that you never move outside of Canada...)
I also did some quick comparison to show how aside from the data issue, the AT&T plans in the USA have way more value than those proposed by Rogers. It would seem as though they're made for people who never get off the phone. Rollover minutes + unlimited mobile to mobile + no long distance fees. How on earth would anyone EVER need anymore than the base 400 daytime mins is beyond me.
That is why I will not be purchasing their iPhone until the prices are brought down to reflect the services offered with them.
ok im done.
But yes. I'm actually thinking of copying this researched letter and setting it up as an auto-response to any further correspondence with Roger$. This ridiculousness has got to end.
But yes. I'm actually thinking of copying this researched letter and setting it up as an auto-response to any further correspondence with Roger$. This ridiculousness has got to end.
If you do, take the most recent version as the beginning has been rewritten with a slightly different slant. It's slightly less likely to be ignored.
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