I have ranted on a few occasions about how Canadians get reamed with respect to wireless data plans, and their cost thereof (really high), particularly with *personal* inequity I feel about not having any unlimited data plans. This made sense in a sick sort of way; after all, how could anyone charge $15 for 2 megabytes with a $10/megabyte overage without requiring six figures for an “unlimited” data plan?

And yet — the unlimited data plan has finally come to Canada.

Seems like the heralding of the almighty Jesus phone iPhone to Rogers has forced its competitor Bell to bite the bullet and, in effect, blink. While its unclear exactly when the iPhone will be coming to Canada (surely not before Christmas), it seems like Bell wanted to get on top of the ball and offer something incredibly enticing — in effect, going “over the top”, in poker parlance, waiting for Rogers to try and top it.

You might love the iPhone for all kinds of reasons; I love it already because of the kind of “price war” this is going to start, which is a very *good* thing, as it has already put unlimited data on the table, which you can be _sure_ the other wireless carriers are going to have to match.

Which, again, is excellent. I mean, unlimited data should have been an option years ago — this isn’t 1997 after all.

Over at the Boy Genius Report, Joshua Karp reports that unlimited mobile data plans — well, singular, “plan” — are coming to Canada, courtesy of Bell Mobility, for the grand cost of $75 per month. Now, if this were completely true, it might have implications for how mobile devices were used (i.e. for true mobile computing), and even, perhaps, for the iPhone’s future in Canada. Having said that, there are some caveats to said plan, namely

a) that the “unlimited” plan requires you to have a PC Data card, so using it on a mobile phone is out of the question.

b) it is bound by “acceptable use” according to their Terms Of Service.

Now, you might roll your eyes and say *OF COURSE* its bound by their TOS. Everything else is, isn’t it? Well, if you read the Terms of Service real carefully, you’ll find that under section 19:

You shall not use or allow others to use the Service or your Device if such use:consumes excessive network capacity in Bell’s reasonable opinion, or causes our network, or our ability to provide services to others, to be adversely affected;is for multi-media streaming, voice over Internet protocol or any other application which uses excessive network capacity that is not made available to you by Bell;is to operate an email, web, news, chat or other service.

So who knows what Bell’s reasonable opinion is, but it sure looks like you won’t be making any VOIP calls using this service, watching “excessive” amounts of streaming video through YouTube, or possible exceed some magical ceiling. In fact, there are some reports that this ceiling amounts to a kingly sum of 250MB, which you only find out *after* you purchase the plan.

Its a known fact that Canadians are routinely paying more per megabyte for mobile transfers, and this is likely to continue until we start getting some real competition in this domain. Which is pretty unlikely at the moment as Canada is carved up into an oligarchy of non-competing media interests.

And this is a real pity, as stiflingly high mobile transfer rates mean that mobile computing — even as handheld — as a movement, isn’t likely to take off as it has in other parts of the world, iPhones not withstanding. In fact, things may not until we get a real “unlimited” plan that’s easily accessible to everyone.