Data Plans: Unlimited or 200 MB Per Month?

I just took this picture of my study space
to verify whether I will be able to take pictures with
my regular camera and post them to the blog since doing that
with my BlackBerry is something I can't
afford to do any more until
the end of the month

Spanish prof recently posted a question as to whether it makes more sense to go for an unlimited data plan on her smartphone or to choose the 200 MB per month option.

Phone companies tell gullible customers like myself that they really don't need unlimited plans and that all their data needs will be covered extremely well by the plans with pre-set data limits. AT&T has already killed its unlimited data plan (this is a company that is unstoppable in its desire to rip off customers), and now other companies are following suit.

As one of those idiots who fell for the "you-really-don't-need-an-unlimited-data-plan-because-you-don't download-that-much" mantra, let me tell you what the 200 MB per month means in practical terms. I use my BlackBerry's Internet access to read and answer emails, blog and Twitter. I never watch any movies or YouTube videos. Never download any music, games, or anything else that can be downloaded. Never surf the Internet from my smartphone. Maybe once every six weeks I receive a .doc attachment and open it. I also take pictures and send them to my blog once or twice a week. When I do that, I always make sure that the photo is emailed in the smallest size possible.

And still, somehow, I keep exceeding those magical 200MB all the time. And then I have to pay extra for the next chunk of data. Of course, if you use your smartphone's Internet access even less than I do, then, by all means, get the limited plan. The only question I have is why a person who uses it even less than I do would need it at all.

Evidence of Spring

Finally my campus is becoming beautiful again.

P.S. My cell phone takes really good pictures.

P.P.S. See these beautiful pictures? Well, on Friday it's going to snow. Right on the flowers and trees in bloom. What a nasty climate this is.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Things That Suck in Canada

I love Canada, but there are three things that suck something fierce in my country (no, this post will not talk about taxes): banks, cell phone connections, and the Internet. These three areas are monopolized, which is never good because when there is a monopoly, competition dies. And when there is no competition, there is no incentive to provide goods and services that are even marginally decent.

Canadian banks charge you for every breath you take. Depositing, withdrawing, having an account - everything carries a fee. They mess up, steal your money, and charge you for this transaction. (This actually happened to me. National Bank of Canada stole $1,000 from me, and I could do nothing to get it back. They even recognized they messed up, but that money has never been recovered. By me, that is.) 

They also have this weird policy of "freezing" any money you deposit. I deposit some money in cash, and can't have access to it for days. If you deposit a check, it's frozen at least for a week. If the check is American, your money is frozen for 30 days. I once deposited a check from the Treasury of the US in the amount of $250. And then I had to wait for 30 days for it to clear. I mean, I know the US Treasury is not in great shape, but you can reasonably expect it to be able to clear a $250 check, right? After I moved to the US, I kept bugging bank tellers, unable to believe how easy banking was in the US: "So you are saying that I can deposit this check and have access to my money immediately? Like, right now? Like, this very moment? For real?" 

Canadian Internet banking is a story that I'll keep for another day because it's too bizarre. And if you dare to lose your bank card, woe betide you. You will be tortured and abused by the condescending bank tellers to the degree where you will start considering how great life was before the banking system came into existence.

The cell phone services in Canada are equally nasty. The quality of the connection sucks. Canadians know that there are specific places in their houses, apartments, offices, streets, where cell phone connection just dies. Every conversation I have with my sister who lives in Montreal is punctured by her saying "OK, I'm gonna get disconnected now. OK, the connection is about to drop again. Don't hang up if the sound disappears, it might get back up in a minute." And the cost of having a cell phone has always been sky-high. When I moved back to Canada for a year in 2007-8, I could never understand my cell phone bill. I kept thinking that somebody put the wrong number of zeros on the amount I owed. My happy-go-lucky American habit of blabbing on the cell phone all day long had to be abandoned.

The Internet connection is also expensive, slow and bad. In the US, you can always catch some free Wi-Fi somewhere, but in Canada it’s all password protected. Even in Starbucks, you can’t get free Wi-Fi. Every time I go back to Canada, I prepare to struggle with the Internet connection. As a blogger in the US, I'm used to being able to blog from pretty much anywhere. In Canada, though, I always feel disconnected from the world. Every trip to Canada is spent in a frantic search for a connection. And even if you are fortunate enough to find one, prepare for it to drop for no apparent reason at the worst moment possible.

As if things weren't bad enough as it is, Canadian monopolists are now trying to make the Internet connection even harder to get and even more expensive:

The CRTC has decided to allow Bell and other big telecom companies to change the way Canadians are billed for Internet access. Metering, or usage-based billing (UBB), will mean that service providers can charge per byte in addition to their basic access charges. The move is sure to stifle digital creativity in Canada while the rest of the world looks on and snickers.

 This is so wrong, people.

When Was the First Time You Used the Internet and the Cell Phone?

The very first time I accessed the Internet was in 1995. Obviously, I used a dial-up connection, which was excruciatingly slow. It never took less than 15 minutes to get connected and the connection had a tendency to get interrupted whenever somebody tried to make a phone call to my phone number. Or even the neighbors' phone number. (The way telephones in Ukraine worked was by connecting neighbors' phones with each other. Whenever you picked up the receiver, your neighbors' phone got disconnected and they couldn't make or receive phone calls.) The web offered very little content at that time. Still, I was really impressed that, while sitting in my apartment in Ukraine, I could have a conversation with people across the world. It felt like something magical. Every time when I was waiting for the dial-up to connect me, I kept wondering what it would feel like if the connections were faster and only took about 5 minutes or so. I also liked imagining what the web would look if anybody could place any kind of information they wanted there.

As for the cell phones, I resisted them for a very long time. The idea that people would be able to locate me at any given moment made me feel extremely uncomfortable. It also felt like such an incredible drag to have to figure out what all the buttons meant and how all the cell phone's functions worked. Finally, in 2000 I let my sister give me the most basic cell phone in existence as a gift. Today, if somebody were to deprive me of my Internet access and my BlackBerry for three days, I would start experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms.

What are you first memories of using the Internet and the cell phone?