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The Week That Was
By Mark Evans | July 12, 2008
For anyone who reads this blog on a regular or semi-regular basis, it goes without saying it was an All-iPhone-All-The-Time week given the launch of the greatest thing sliced bread (aka the 3G iPhone).
Clearly, I got carried away but Rogers did a bad job with its ridiculous iPhone packages that it was hard not to wade into the fray. As a result, my most popular posts this week were:
- Rogers’ Blackberry Customers Should be Upset, comparing iPhone and Blackberry data/voice prices.
- Rogers: Here’s an iPhone Tip in which I suggest Rogers offer plan with unlimited data for $135/month.
- Is the iPhone Going to be a Fiasco for Rogers, which it clearly has become.
In far more interesting news - at least personally - PlanetEye (where I work) made its official launch this week after many months of hard work. We got some great coverage, including Mashable, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat. While the launch was exciting, it’s even more exciting that we’ve got some great new features and partnerships in the pipeline.
A couple of online services that caught my attention:
- FavThumbs, which displays your del.icio.us bookmarks using Web site screen captures. The visual search market is getting really interesting with players such as SearchMe looking to carve out a market niche. I also really like Bit.ly, which has quickly replaced tinyurl.com as my URL shortening service. There’s a good write-up in ReadWriteWeb.
- In the news, it was encouraging to see Ontario unveil plans to implement a levy to pay for the recycling of consumer electronics such as TVs and computer monitors. It’s about time, and, hopefully, just the beginning.
- Finally, the Puzzling Move of the Week has to go to Bell and Telus, which will implement a 15 cent fee for text messages that people receive. This means, they will be double-dipping by charge the text sender and receiver. It’s bad enough Canadian wireless rates are among the highest in the world but now they want to nickle and dime us to death.
The dumbest of this decision was highlighted by BCE spokesman Pierre Leclerc, who said that the pricing decision applies to only 5% of Bell customers because 95% of the text messages sent and received are covered under a bundled plan.
Question: if only a small portion of your customers aren’t paying a monthly bundle fee why go after them. What’s the rationale other than the ability to squeeze even more money out of your customers?
Technorati Tags: iPhone, Rogers
Topics: Web 2.0 |
July 12th, 2008 at 7:57 am
“Question: if only a small portion of your customers aren’t paying a monthly bundle fee why go after them. What’s the rationale other than the ability to squeeze even more money out of your customers?”
I hear BCE is taking on some debt. Every penny is going to count.
July 12th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Agoracom: Excellent point! When you’ve got 10s of billions of dollars of LBO debt, every penny does count.