Angry Canadian
 

First post here and i'm starting a rant.
I am heartbroken, angry, and want to kill someone. I have been obsessing about this phone for months, thinking about it at nights, looking for way to get it. I saw the amazon pre-order and jumped in, got it shipped to my uncles address in cali, blah blah. Then i find out that there are no carriers that can offer 3g in canada. If nokia wants NA market penetration then why the f*ck are they not offering this phone with a proper quad band. I am frustrated, and since i know that nokia developers read these forums i just wanted to tell them off.
:mad::mad:

Re: Angry Canadian
 

http://sadviolin.com


(sorry, http://sadviolin.ca doesn't work....)

Re: Angry Canadian
 

A search of these forums would have reassured you that you just have to be patient. There are a few new 3G carriers coming that should fit the N900. The first one to launch will probably be Wind, hopefully before Christmas. DAVE is coming sometime soon, and if you live in Quebec, it will be Videotron.

Until then, get a month-to-month thing with Fido, and suffer with EDGE data speeds. :(

Re: Angry Canadian
 

don't blame the device for your operator's lack of resources.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Dude, I feel you. I'm in Japan and I got nothing coming as far as N900 here.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I deserve the trombone and the violin. I'm just confused about why nokia won't reach to our market. I have read the other forums and i know about the other operators. however, they won't be coming to vancouver until mid 2010. I'd rather just wait since a new model might as well be announced by then.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Wind should go live in fall 2009, and they say "early" 2010 (first quarter) for Western Canada. Where'd you hear "mid 2010"?

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Well I am from Quebec and the device just damn please me as it is. See I live on three continents (Oceania, Europe and North America) and if I would buy a device with NA frequency I would not be able to use 3G 2/3 of the time. I know I do not represent the typical user but still.

We live on a planet with other people and I am tired of being the only one with 850 MHz 3G (with Roger) and 110 Volt and ... /rant

Re: Angry Canadian
 

How can you live on Oceania , Europe and N.America? Did you find a cheaper charter than RyanAir which is also inter-continental, or simply someone sold you as well the Nokia N900xt teleporting device?

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I went to school for a long time. A good thing about that (beside loosing 22 years of your life at "school") is you travel a lot.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

C'mon man. you didn't like the school, what is the school about? I don't know, but you are lucky enough to enjoy the life over-sea, isn't it? :)

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I hear ya, but realize that the situation's not great for NAM users either. For 3G you have all of :drumroll: ONE carrier option.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Makka, you should have joined this forum and researched the N900 before ordering it. For me, I am not interested in the N900. I am looking forward to an N810 upgrade, better keyboard, better GPS. The screen size of the N900 is too small for me. We understand that the N900 is just the begining of a series of Nokia product. As far as your situation, you can still teather to you present cell phone.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Best to watch out and steer clear of us angry Canadians - we may throw maple syrup at you...

In all seriousness - for Canadians to fully take advantage of the N900, we'll have to wait for our carriers to get their acts in order with respect to the 3G frequencies and cost of data. Hopefully windmobile has the tech and cost advantage over Rogers et al.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

My feeling is really: RIP AWS in Quebec though...(who can trust vidéotron?)

What I can't find, is how much AWS spectrum Bell/Telus and mostly Rogers got in all the provinces and what are their plans...

Re: Angry Canadian
 

It's a bit of a dry read, but look at the Industry Canada website for details:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst...g/sf09001.html

The final results of the AWS spectrum auction are listed here:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst...g/sf09001.html

And my favourite, listed by winner and showing every spectrum block, is:
http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst...g/sf09004.html

My brief summary - the N900 will be supported by a number of companies, but not right away. Still, I'm buying. :)

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Am I missing something here? I've been with Fido/Rogers for 2 years. My E71 3G works just fine on my $15/mo 6GB data plan.

To the original poster, if its the silver edition, I'll gladly take it off your hands :D

Re: Angry Canadian
 

15$/month 6GB plan !?
I'd pay for that... but you dealt it right? :)

EDIT: i can only see 25$ for 500MB online...

Re: Angry Canadian
 

You know what they say about the squeaky wheel. I originally signed a contract with the $7 "unlimited internet" option after the salesgirl guaranteed I could access my gmail account and browse more than the branded commerce sites. After a brief conversation with the sales manager about canceling my contract under misrepresentation, they gave me a 50% rebate on their top tier data plan (at the time) for the duration of my contract.

The data plan rates now are ridiculous. I'm hoping we get some better competition before my contract is up.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Let's hope the CRTC hearing goes well for Wind. Does anybody know if there will be coverage for Wind in Mississauga??

Re: Angry Canadian
 

So it's actually web only through a proxy of some kind? No ssh will go through?
Maybe DNS proxy (iodine) ? :)

If i can get ssh, anything else can be tunneled over, don't they have an unlimited ssh plan? (one can dream haha ;)

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Should be, they got in everywhere but Quebec...

Though from the links below I can only hope that rogers / bell / telus starts rolling out their quebec AWS too to kick videotron a bit so we actually do have competition! I'm afraid though that they want to be in as segregated frequencies as possible so to net let people switch by keeping their phone (so long for the environment)...

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I've just started a month-to-month deal with Fido. The start-up costs are steep. $35 for the SIM, then $35 to activate it. Whatever. I expected no better.

I'm paying $40 a month, no extra fees: $15 for minimal (50mins/mo) voice, $25 for 500mb data. EDGE seems good enough for basic web surfing on the bus, checking e-mail, IM chatting, and even, if I'm patient, downloading maps.

I don't like talking on the phone anyway, so 50 mins should do me. And I don't see myself getting to 500 MB when I can't really do VoIP or stream media and I just jump on WiFi whenever possible, which is quite often in my usual day.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Ouch, didn't realize they were charging _70$ !!_ for a freaking SIM!
I managed to get free voicemail with that 15$ contract and 50 more minutes free for a year... though, i have been a client for a long time and said i really wanted to leave, etc (1h on the phone ...) but that was before the 15$ plan actually existed and was only in "retention".

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I'm on FIDO (I'm in Montreal) but I simply don't use data. I'm on Pay-as-you-go, and actually, on average, I get away with LESS than $10 a month*. But yes, I use the phone very sparingly; rarely enough that even at $10/mo, $0.30/min I am still accumulating airtime.

Data on prepaid is highway robbery here. $0.05/kB; they don't even show that rate anywhere. On postpaid plans, the (no-data-plan) data rate is $0.03/kB, which is still extortion.

I hope Wind will have reasonable roaming agreements in La Belle Province, because I don't trust Quebecor to have reasonable plans. Right now, they resell Rogers GSM service, but it's not cost-effective unless you also sign your entire life over to them (Cable TV, internet, home phone). So I think they will use their own network simply as a tool to rope you into their other services.

Joe.
* due to THEIR accounting problems. They can't get automatic refill to work for me; so every few months I call them up, they try to set it up again, and extend my current balance by 2 or 3 months. So I only pay $10 9 or 10 months a year.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

There is NO WAY I'm signing a contract. I'm willing to throw away that $70 sign-up fee and get a new SIM with someone else (for yet another $70, I bet), rather than lock-in to a plan that will jail me in Fido's EDGE world, even as compatible 3G comes to my city in a few months... And I would have gotten prepaid, too, but there's no data add-on, and I'm not paying those insane rates for data.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

And some local carriers. Because I get 3G data using T-Mobile bands but the voice is on ATT bands. $10 for unlimited data.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

wtf? I just activated a sim for my Mom a month ago. I've got the bill in front of me right now. $39.20 after taxes for activation and $10/mo for 60m airtime. I've never paid more than $35 with fido for activation.

To others, my data plan covers everything. voip, im, ssh, exchange sync, a-gps, blah blah. Perhaps they block these services on their branded phones, but I've never used a branded phone. You get what you pay for. ;)

The $7 "unlimited internet" was actually a branded-only WAP option, which is how I got them to give me a cut rate on a real data plan under false representation.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Right. But the SIM costs $35, too. So $70 (plus taxes) total.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Those 'extended balances' are bs. I had a 6 month extension fail three months in a row while i was on pay as you go. There is zero customer service w/o a contract with fido. Had I not wanted/needed 3G, I would have stuck with my Telus carryover plan.

Their billing system is also the worst in the industry. Even on contract, I'm constantly getting freebies due to the fact I have to call them every second month for adjustments.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Sorry, no. $35 for the kit. I activated it myself. No charge.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

They charged me $35 for the kit, and I had to get the SIM activated in a store (because the phone was an "unlocked" device not purchased through Fido).

Believe me, I tried online. The website just said that I couldn't do that, and that I could try again later...

The biggest hassle is getting data on a month-to-month plan with an unlocked phone. They had to pretend that I had an iPhone. Hee hee.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Ditto here for my gf. Bought the $35 Sim kit at a store; then activated by calling customer service. No charge for that. Stuck it into an unlocked phone and was good to go.

And even though I'm on el-cheapo prepaid, I never had problems with getting to customer support. (Getting COMPETENT customer support, that's a different story, and about 50/50 probability) Even when my balance was cleared because I didn't refill in time, they restored it without much hassle. (I think on my account, they now expect sh*t to happen, and know it their fault, not mine)

I think though that there is an additional charge for activating postpaid plans, maybe that's where the extra charge was.

Still, I will switch as soon as a reasonable alternative appears. At this point in Canada, I think the rule is "Friends don't let friends sign mobile service contracts!"

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Being from montreal, we should organize a "change carrier day"... July 1st? :P
To show them that we do care about competition >:]

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Hmm, maybe because I got a free shitty LG with my contract? I just swapped the SIM out when my unlocked E71 arrived.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Yeah. And you got a contract. Sign up for slavery, and they'll polish your shoes for free, too.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

I'm confused as to why you think Nokia has stopped all development.

But I'm even more confused why you would say what you did in your first post. In the US that would be an FBI investigation trigger. Just ask my stupid nephew who liked to idly talk in chats about blowing stuff up.

Re: Angry Canadian
 

Heh, actually, the receipt I quoted was a pay as you go activation kit. No phone. I popped the sim into some non-fido phone my brother had laying around, activated it online and gave it to my mom. Now I get to call India every month for fido billing errors on two accounts. Whee.

Only reason I signed a contract was not be raped on data charges. :D Believe me, I miss my Telus pay and go. $10/mo min top up for carry over, vmail, callerid, call forward, call conference all included and not a single billing error in 5 years. Best "plan" I ever had. Then I got hooked on the E71 and just had to go 3g...