A View on View :: Why Carriers Love the Blackberry. Why Alec Saunders is Crying

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the blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

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Why Carriers Love the Blackberry. Why Alec Saunders is Crying

by Mark Evans on Sun 26 Feb 2006 08:05 AM EST | Permanent Link

As the Blackberry teeters on the verge of extinction in the U.S. after yet another legal loss, Alec Saunders has revealed a dirty, little secret about why ARPU-crazed wireless carriers love the Blackberry so they that they're willing to give it away. Saunders just received his monthly bill with a overage charge of $72. Puzzled, he discovered the "unlimited" plan offered to him by Rogers meant unlimited speed, not unlimited data. Sure he should have read the fine print but his experience illustrates a key reason why the love affair between the Blackberry and wireless carriers is so hot and heavy. First, the Blackberry is a cash-cow, and it will become even more lucrative with the launch of new high-speed networks and new Blackberries that finally have a half-decent Web browser. Combining bigger pipes and a better browser gets you more data usage. Now, here's the best part: most Blackberry users - unlike Poor Alec - don't care about much they pay for the service because they their companies pay their wireless bills because it's a business "tool". If the Blackberry bill is $100 or $150 or $200 a month, so be it because it's not coming out of the user's pocket. But if you're a carrier, the Blackberry is the killer tool to jump-start data usage and ARPU because the Blackberry has become such a must-have corporate tool, everyone seems to have stopped looking at their bills. Maybe corporate bean-counters will start seeking cheaper alternatives (Good, Visto?) when the economy slows down and cost-cutting becomes a strategic necessity. Maybe then, they will realize how expensive using a Blackberry can be. While Alec may get little sympathy from Rogers, he make get some measure of satisfaction by signing an online petition against the company and its sneaky 25MB per month data plan.

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Re: Why Carriers Love the Blackberry. Why Alec Saunders is Crying

by bsharwood on Sun 26 Feb 2006 12:50 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Mark,

It's probably worth pointing out at this point, as we do often, that Rogers, as with all the other carriers, are expensive relative to the rest of the world. If Alec wants to reduce his blackberry bills, we suggest he move his head office to the U.S., where Verizon offers real unlimited Data plans on EVDO for ~$70.

It's not the Blackberry dummy, it's the carrier.

Brian

Re: Re: Why Carriers Love the Blackberry. Why Alec Saunders is Crying

by Mark Evans on Sun 26 Feb 2006 02:06 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

true, true....bad, rogers.....:)

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>