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Rogers Offers Competitive Pricing in Exchange for a 3-year Contract; Laptop Tethering Included Canadians who are clamoring for an iPhone 3GS may be deterred by Rogers new iPhone plans. In order to pay $199 for a 3GS a three year contract is in order. This is one more year than Americans have to sign for with AT&T. Rogers is also offering the 3G for $99 – same as America – with the same three year deal.

The phones will be available the same date as in the US – June 19th.

Three years is a long time to commit to one service provider but with the runaway success of the previous iterations of the iPhone it is likely that most people will throw caution to the wind and pay the cheaper price for the phone instead of optioning for a no-contract option.

According to Keith McArthur’s Twitter page, senior director of social media, the phones would also be available without a contract at a larger sum.

The limiting time offering of a 6GB data plan from Rogers has also been mentioned by McArthur.

What Canadians will receive where Americans are so far out of luck with AT&T is the ability to tether their iPhones to their laptops and use it as a 3G modem. McArthur also added that this service will be free of charge, also, for a limited time only.

Another feature Americans will have to wait for until late summer (according to AT&T and Apple) is MMS messaging. Rogers users will have it out of the [3GS] box or when they update their older iPhones to 3.0 software on June 17th.

Until one gets the opportunity to analyze what the average bill will cost for a Rogers customer it remains unclear on whether it will be a good deal for Canadians. In the end Rogers is offering a more fully featured service plan, tethering means a lot to me, than AT&T ever has and it has me wishing I were a resident of Canada.