Why I probably switch to Rogers when my minutes run out | Other carriers | Consumer forum

Both me and my wife have iPhone 3GS phones. At first they required a proxy setup outlined many places in this forum to work properly, but the IM apps never really functioned until one fine day in November, when Rogers accidentally turned the "3G wide open switch" on. Our phones worked brilliantly. All apps pushed notifications instantly. When IOS 5 was released, even iMessenger worked perfectly.

As many of you know, 5 days ago Rogers turned the switch back off, rendering the best part of the phone, iMessenger, useless. It works in WiFi, sort of, but "sort of" isn't good enough. We had a taste of what it is like to have a "real" smartphone plan and now we lost it.

Today I did a bunch of research. First off, we are not big data users. Just iMessaging, text-only emails and maybe Facebook. We always have access to WiFi when we're moving lots of data like YouTube. I don't text much but my wife does a bit.

In our case, I believe Rogers Pay As You Go is now a better deal. They offer 100mb of data for $10/month, 500mb for $25/month. They also offer a "medium sized" text bundle – 250 texts for $5. Now my wife's phone costs $20/month for the data + text add-ons (plus a bit of talking) and my phone costs $10 for the data add-on (plus a bit of talking and texting). With Rogers, the cost of my phone will be the same but my wife's will be $5 cheaper because of the smaller texting add-on. What makes it a better deal is the fact that it is a true data plan and not just a web browsing plan.

I have tasted the sweet nectar of real smartphone service and I am hooked. But I still have $89 in my Speakout account, so it will be a while before I pull the trigger.