As I mentioned last week, there was some excitement in the blogosphere about Rogers updating their wireless data rates on February 5th. Well, as that date is now upon us, those rates new rates have indeed become a reality, however it is the fine print that spoils most people's excitement.

"Important: This plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing only.
Plan is available on select phones only (PDAs such as Blackberry or
Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are
not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible devices, incurred
while tethering (using device as wireless modem for laptop) or incurred
using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications downloaded to your device
will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB."

Now, I wasn't looking for the ability to tether my laptop to my iPhone for $7 a month, but I would wish that my wife and I could use between 10 and 20 MBs of data per month for things like Google Maps, Email, and other little productivity tools.

I have been pretty happy with Rogers through the years, but promoting WAP websites as new and exciting technology is just getting a little ridiculous. And to visit WAP sites on 3G? There should be a law against this!

While preforming a recent update of the iPhone 1.1.3 firmware, I was suprised by something I saw. I was using the update instructions found here and had opened installer in my Mac OSX terminal to follow along the process of running the update through the installer app. As the firmware was downloading from hte Apple website to the iPhone, I was amazed that over the wifi connection on the iPhone I was reaching download speeds of almost 300 KB/s.

I have mentioned in the past that back in December I got what I thought was a not too badly priced data plan from Rogers for my iPhone. I mean it is all relative, but after paying $25 a month for 5MB of data for the past few years, having a 1GB plan for $65 was almost like winning the lottery.