- Get your #baseball cap on! MLB Extra Innings is on free preview until May 5th. ^eo
Rogers launches improved unlimited family and student plans
August 5th, 2010 a 11:19am
With back to school season around the corner, you may be thinking about buying a new cell phone for a member of your family. Or, perhaps you want to give a special going-away present to the student in your life as they head off to college or university.
We’re now making it easier than ever to stay connected and get great value through a variety of unlimited and shared features, such as unlimited messaging, unlimited talk evenings and weekends, unlimited social networking, and more.
We are family…
Rogers is offering new Unlimited Family Plans that offer more options to share voice and data – and may help quell fears that your teenager’s insatiable texting habit or your spouse’s long phone conversations will take a huge bite out of your plan.
While Rogers has had Family Plans for some time, what’s new is that you can add a line to a Family Plan for just $15 a month (voice only) or $25 a month (voice and data) plus Government Regulatory Recovery Fee and share all the unlimited features of your plan, such as unlimited national calling between family members and unlimited evenings and weekends (starting at 9 pm).
And, if you sign up for a voice-and-data plan on select devices, you also get unlimited social networking to a selection of popular social media sites.
If you already have a device, you can add the plan but don’t worry if you don’t have a device just yet. With any new line added, you’ll also be able to get a $0 device or smartphone from an expanded list of our coolest devices like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini , Acer Liquid E or the BlackBerry Curve 8520.
For more information on Unlimited Family Plans including a full list of plans and unlimited options, click here.
New teachers, new friends, new shoes…new cell phone plan
Also available is our Unlimited Student Plan that offers a long list of unlimited features that matter most to students including unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited messaging and unlimited social networking to popular sites.
On top of great plans we’ve got a great back-to-school lineup of exclusive BlackBerry and Social View devices including the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 and X10 Mini, Acer Liquid E and the recently announced Motorola Flipout.
Another Rogers exclusive: all BlackBerry student plans on devices that support WiFi or UMA come with unlimited WiFi calling. Calls made from a WiFi access point do not count towards your monthly bucket of minutes – perfect for students on WiFi enabled campuses. UPDATE (October 14, 2010, 11:44 AM): BlackBerry 9300 and 9700 customers: you can now upgrade to a new OS that supports WiFi calling, which can be used on the BlackBerry student plan – more details here: http://bit.ly/cgwRSV. And remember you can always go to http://www.blackberry.com/update for the latest OS updates.
For more information on Unlimited Student Plans, check out http://www.rogers.com/unlimitedstudentplan.
Are you heading back to school this year? What do you think of the new plans? What unlimited features would you use most in your family?
Update (August 11, 2010, 1:10 PM): There have been a lot of questions about our new plans, and the now-updated pages on Rogers.com will better explain how some of these new plans work.
For new family share plans, visit www.rogers.com/family and then click on “Connect Your Family” in the top right corner. From there you’ll see a step by step process that lets you build the features that fit your needs.
For new student plans, visit www.rogers.com/unlimitedstudentplan and then click on “Get Started.” You’ll get to a tool that will take you through the components of our new student plans.
The most questions have come in about our new family share plans. Here’s an example that should illustrate how it works:
Two parents each have a BlackBerry on the $100/month (plus Government Regulatory Recovery Fee) Family Share plan with the unlimited messaging feature. They have two teenagers who don’t have phones but would mostly text and use BBM, plus make the occasional call home and to friends.
They add each teenager for $25/month (plus Government Regulatory Recovery Fee) each, getting two BlackBerry 8520 smartphones for $0 on a three-year term. Now all four family members get access to unlimited messaging, unlimited family calling, and unlimited evenings and weekends. On top of that, they can all share the additional 400 daytime minutes in the plan. On the data side, they share 1 GB, which enables the family to send and receive a lot of e-mails and visit the Internet.
So – for four people using four smartphones (two of them new), that comes to $150/month, plus Government Regulatory Recovery fees. This is the lowest possible entry point for a family with all these benefits.
There are also other options. Instead of the unlimited messaging option, they could choose My5, which lets each person choose their own My5 for unlimited talk, extreme text, picture and video messaging. They can also choose unlimited calling to anybody on the Rogers/Fido/Rogers Home phone network or choose to double their weekday minutes making the shared minutes 800.
They could move up to the next plan to add more minutes, plus an additional $15/month (plus Government Regulatory Recovery Fee) allows the family to double the data for all four people to 2 GB.
If you have further questions, we’ll try to answer as many as we can below.
Miranda MacDonald is a regular contributor to RedBoard.
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So you have to pay $15 or $25 a month just to share what you already pay for with another phone? You don’t get any additional minutes or data whatsoever? You could get an entirely new plan for that money, especially with one of the discount unlimited brands. What is the value here?
Hi Ted,
If you add a line to a plan, you also get a $0 device or smartphone. For example, if you add a line at $25, you can get an X10 mini, Acer Liquid E, or BlackBerry Curve 8520 for $0.
When you say “add a line to a plan” you mean “add a line to a FAMILY plan” right? Otherwise it could be construed as adding a line to any plan (new or existing), and I’m sure you don’t want/mean that (especially in writing).
Yes, that is correct. I meant “when you add a line to a family plan.” Thanks for the clarification.
Sweet Rogers is heading in the right direction.. Just need to up those data limits on the shared family plan. 1GB is not enough it should include the 6GB…
Chris:
The 6GB/$30 promo can be added to a family share plan, but can’t be shared.
Hey Chris. Thanks for your comment.
The new Family Share plans are intended to offer the best possible entry point while allowing more to be added as needed. If a family decides they need more data, they can so so simply by adding 1GB shared data for only $15/month.
These Family Packages are lame. If Rogers wants some extra business they should just allow adding a line to ANY package for the $25 a month. Then they’d get an extra $25 a month when I moved my wife’s unlocked iPhone from Telus. By being greedy and charging a premium for a specific share plans Rogers won’t get any additional business they could have otherwise obtained.
My existing plan would have been plenty of bandwidth for my wife and I to share, but as it stands I’ll stick with Rogers and she’ll remain on Telus. Way to think like a carrier and sabotage yourself, Rogers!
If I could upvote this comment I would. Truer words could not be said.
@Chetan @Denis Lemire The post has been updated with more information that demonstrate the benefits of the new family plans, and please check out the link/tool on rogers.com when you have a minute.
While all plans don’t fall under this category, this represents the lowest possible entry point to add family members.
There’s no details, just annoying music. How about dropping the flash ad, and just giving me the numbers?
Have to agree with Chris Maki. I have always been interested in adding my wife to my plan, but Rogers never includes full details on how the program works. Always have more questions than answers. Flashing ads without specific details really does nothing for me. And oh yeah, the music on the flash ad is indeed annoying.
Hi Chris and Stan,
We’ve updated the link so you’ll see the full list of plans and be able to build your plan by going to http://www.rogers.com/family.
And thanks for your feedback. I’ve passed it on to the team as well.
@Chris @Stan: The URLs are updated. You can skip the intro if you’d prefer, and the updated tool should demonstrate how the plans work.
To me this is not a deal at all. The $25 is more then enough for a new plan…. Id love to get my mom on my plan and on the rogers network but not for $25+ plus the fake fee’s plus I think it’s 3 year contract?
Kane Hart: Here’s how it works:
For $25/month, you get the privilege of signing up for a family plan at a minimum cost of $100/month, which includes two lines. Then you get the added bonus of any additional lines up to a max of 5 (i.e., lines 3-5 @ $25/line). This doesn’t include the special $30/6GB data which can be added but not shared. You also get the benefit of adding 1 feature to each line, and this also isn’t shared (i.e., line 1 would have its own feature, line 2 would have its own feature).
“While Rogers has had Family Plans for some time, what’s new is that you can add a line to a Family Plan for just $15 a month (voice only) or $25 a month (voice and data) plus Government Regulatory Recovery Fee and share all the unlimited features of your plan, such as unlimited national calling between family members and unlimited evenings and weekends (starting at 9 pm).”
“For more information on Unlimited Family Plans including a full list of plans and unlimited options, click here.”
Clicking on the link gives no more information that what was there yesterday (or the day before, or the day before that). Seriously, why can’t you just provide the details here instead of redirecting people to a page that has NO info on unlimited Family Plans??
Hi Chetan,
We’ve updated the link. You’ll see more info if you click “here” in the post, or just go to http://www.rogers.com/family
That’s excellent, loud obnoxious add and short on the details.. Like we can be distracted by bright shinny objects li…Oh hey a quarter !
Hi Mike,
Just responded to a few people who had similar comments. We’ve updated the link. You’ll see more info if you click “here” in the post, or just go to http://www.rogers.com/family
No love for data plans?
Hi Adam,
There’s both 1GB and 2GB data plan options on the Family plans and a 500 MB data plan option on the Student Plan.
The student plans are identical to plans you can get as an ordinary person and come nowhere close to matching your competitors’ student plans or what you had until Monday. Also, according to the Legal Disclaimers, they are for a limited time that expired on Tuesday!
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for flagging that error in the Legal Disclaimer. We”ll get that corrected as soon as possible.
Hi C, please check http://www.rogers.com/unlimitedstudentplan when you have a minute to see what’s different. Unlimited WIFI calling for BlackBerrys, unlimited messaging included, plus a second choice of feature.
I don’t see the unlimited student plan. All I see is “150 Minutes Unlimited Social Networking & IM”
No Matt, That’s their ‘unlimited’ voice plans. their ‘unlimited’ Student data plans are $50 a month for 500MB and unlimited Social networking.
However, they seem to ignore actual smartphone users who intend on doing more than just facebook and twitter.
Yep that’s right. Even now, I have NOOOOO idea what’s inside this Student Plan …
Hi Julien, sorry about that. We’ve updated the post with info on how to use the plan building tool.
Can you not have this annoying song set to auto play?
What happened to the Unlimited Family page earlier, it had more information on it without some annoying song play?
The links that should link to “more information” don’t work.
There should be more flexibility to choose the plan combination because every family has different need. For instance, the value packs should separate the combination between Call Display/Name Display & Voicemail. Not everybody needs voicemail feature. But almost everybody needs call display/name display. It’s about time Call display/Name display feature included as standard feature with no extra charge.
For Family plan, we should be able to choose the suitable data plan to be shared on top of whatever voice plan. Some families doesn’t need talk minutes a lot but need more data.
Still no details listed on the site as usual. And of course this doesn’t apply to the iPhone. #fail
The student plans are awful, no where near the competition, or the plans that expired from last week.
The link to the family unlimited plans is still only going to the flash advertising. I did get through to the details yesterday at some point but it isn’t working right now. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Hi everyone,
Rogers.com is currently being updated with full details and will be available shortly. Thanks for your patience.
Yet another disappointing showing from Rogers. You’re very lucky that most customers are locked into a contract. Miranda, you have no idea how many angry Rogers customers are only still here because we refuse to pay the atrocious cancellation fee.
It’s time for Rogers to make some real progress. Wake up and realize that the new competition is right on your heels. These “unlimited” plans are LIMITED in the primary feature that these phones are designed to do… make voice calls.
@Taylor @Paul @Lon, please have another look at the post above and updated links to see details on the plans.
Yea the student plan looks pretty much the same other than nation wide whereas the competitors (Telus) include unlimited txt messaging to everyone, not just my5.
I dont get it. if i want a this plan from rogers but i dont have a line or im not with rogers im new to it. how much would i have to pay for a line?
Hi Joey.
Say for instance X and Y want to share a voice and data plan. With a family plan, they have the option to do so for as low as $100 together. After that, say they want to add Z to their plan. They have the option of doing so for an additional $25.
I hope that helps.
Thanks for confirming why I will not switch over my wife and her father. What garbage. As a current customer, I cannot get in on this plan, the secondary phones are garbage with no option to pay for an upgraded phone for my wife and a regular cell phone for her father. The plans are somewhat half decent, but still…. Factor in voice mail, call display text messaging, (if you chose one of the other free options) and each phone now adds 20-40 a month. How does this translate into a good family deal…. It doesn’t. I am one of those customers that gives Rogers an easy 300-400 a month of my hard earned money, and it seems anytime I want to give them more, I must fight with them to continue to do so.