What a day of tortured joy for Canadian Apple fanatics — Rogers Wireless finally launches the iPhone here and the Rogers website subsequently dies. I’m sure their call centres aren’t faring much better.

While I’ve never been much of a Mac/Apple fan myself, I was the proud owner of a 1 gigabyte iPod Shuffle at one time, until it met its demise in a washing machine accident.

Speaking of shuffles, Rogers has pulled off some fancy footwork when it comes to how they’re going to be charging people for data on their phones. But first a little background.

Consumers haven’t exactly been overly pleased with Rogers’ handling of the iPhone, especially where data usage is concerned. And rightly so, considering the Canadian iPhone is the 2nd most costly in the world.

With Rogers, the most data you can get is 1 gigabyte a month (which they don’t advertise by the way, you have to ask them about it) for $60 a month (plus tax of course). Pretty expensive huh? Well, wait Rogers has something better up their sleeve.

Rogers recently unveiled that they’re going to be providing new a new data plan, which will give you 6 gigabytes of data usage for only $30 a month. Sounds pretty good so far, right?

Well, as long as you’re a new activation (and not an existing customer who’s currently overpaying for data) who’s willing to sign up for 3 years, then you can get the plan, as a promotion, until August 31st. Wait… what?

Once again, it’s another step backwards for the Canadian telecommunications industry.

With some industry analysts calling foul, and saying that the whole thing has just been engineered to build buzz about the iPhone, other analysts have tried to set us straight:

Analyst Carmi Levy said Rogers didn’t do a “knee jerk reaction” in response to consumer outrage.

“Carriers of this magnitude do not change course on a dime and you don’t simply introduce a half-baked plan into the market without weeks and-or months of study,” said Levy, of Toronto AR Communications Inc.

“I believe it was part of their plan all along to introduce this in the run-up to the launch, almost as an additional sweetener or additional incentive to boost awareness of the 3G (network),” Levy said, referring to Roger’s network.

So Carmi is essentially agreeing with the assertion that Rogers had planned this all along — but it’s actually to boost awareness of their 3G network? Well, Telus and Bell both have 3G networks as well, so I’m not sure what Rogers is bragging about.

Sascha Segan, of PC Magazine, has heralded this as an overwhelming victory for the consumer against the mighty Canadian telecom. But didn’t Carmi just tell us that Rogers was planning this all along? So instead of feeling victorious, the Canadian consumer should feel manipulated.

Did I just mention Telus and Bell? With the spotlight focused on Rogers’ data bait-and-switch, Telus and Bell seemed to think it was a good time to start charging 15¢ per text message for incoming messages (which have always been free).

Did they say Telus and Bell? How is it that two independently-operated public companies both decided to start charging exactly the same rate at exactly the same time for a service they had always provided for free?

Not to mention the fact that the rationale offered makes even less sense:

Wireless technology expert Ken Chase said he does not accept the rationale from Bell and Telus that the volume of text messages places great demands on the networks. The consultant with the Torontobased firm Heavy Computing said that while 45.3 million text messages sent daily sounds like a lot, the amount of space this takes up on a network and related costs to a telecom company are minuscule. A text message sent via mobile phone can be no more than 160 characters, and each character is about a byte. If 45 million text messages are sent throughout Canada every day and each message is about 100 characters, this totals 4.5 gigabytes. This amounts to about the same amount of gigabytes required to download two or three high-resolution movies from the Internet.

Just in case you guys need it, I have an 8 gigabyte MicroSD card in my phone. I’d be willing to sell it for around 100 bucks. Hey, I’d be happy to just give it away, but I’ve got to pay my Rogers data bill.