This is one entry in a multi-part series on the state of mobilecatching in Canada. There are many services coming online that offer podcasts direct to handset, but do the providers in Canada offer plans that make it feasible for consumers to take advantage of these services? The series preamble is here.
Like TELUS, Rogers offers a music store, but a quick search failed to turn up any podcasts. Assuming, that there aren't any available via the Rogers infrastructure, let's go along the same lines as we did with TELUS.
I'm not a Roger's customer so I can't be as insightful as I hope I was with TELUS, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that Rogers' handsets are as tightly menued as the TELUS ones and therefor installing a third-party mobilecatcher and downloading and endless stream of podcasts is going to catch Rogers' attention. And not in a good way.
So, let's get a good old Treo or Windows Mobile device from Rogers, load up Quick News (for Palm) or SmartFeed (for Windows Mobile) and go shopping for a Rogers' data plan:
- $15/month: 1.5MB
- $25/month: 3MB
- $40/month: 7MB
- $60/month: 25MB
- $100/month: 200MB
The $60 plan is a better deal than TELUS's by far at $60 for 8MB, but the Rogers' $100 plan falls short of TELUS' 250MB limit.
Still, I consider myself a low podcast listener. I listen to about 5 podcasts a week and most of them are weekly but a few of them are daily. I calculate that even my limited podcast usage is around 80MB as follows:
- 3 X weekly podcasts at about 10MB each = 30MB
- 2 X daily (5-day) podcasts at about 5MB each = 50MB
That's really rough, but probably in the ballpark. Therefore, as with TELUS, I'm going to have to go for the $100 plan which is more than I pay for my television, Internet, and telephone combined at home. Too much.
Whoa - standby: that's 80MB a week which means 320MB a month. Now it's waaaay out of the ballpark.
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