One reason: Cost.

Sure its cheaper to deploy than land-based services, but for you and me to USE the service is far too expensive. Rogers charges $210 per month for a measly 500 megabytes of access to HSDPA on your laptop or phone.

This wouldn’t last long for most users. That’s only HALF A GB for $210!! (Plus massive overage charges)

Of course, they also will give you an even smaller plan of 200 megabytes for $100. (Plus massive overage charges)

This cannot compete with the affordable Wi-Max or Wi-Fi prices. And, these HSDPA prices are the new improved offerings from Rogers/Fido. All the cellular carriers match their plans/prices and right now competition does not exist. When the Wi-Max started, it was called iFido and costed less. Then Rogers/Bell took over. They want to sell that, not this EVDO/HSDPA. They do not think that average consumers need data, but instead they target large corporations who will pay these astronomical prices for HSDPA/EVDO. Not to mention, they don’t want to put a dent in their home internet businesses!

I own a 850 HSDPA phone, and my conclusion is: Who cares about 3G, UTMS, HSDPA when they aren’t within reach for most people anyways? I know I’m not excited at all. I don’t want to sell the car to pay for a very easily-reachable $10,000 data bill.

Telstra (australia), which is currently shutting down its CDMA EV-DO network, has an upgrade to its 3G network scheduled this year that will push the peak up to 14.4Mbps. Rogers will presumably follow suit; but when

In any case, Bell/Telus are gearing up to release EV-DO Release A this year, which will bring about 3Mbps+ speeds to CDMA users. Both HSPDA and EVDO have a healthy evolutionary path for the near future.