June 16 (Bloomberg) -- Rogers Communications Inc., Canada's biggest mobile-phone carrier, plans to switch to a new price model for data services as it prepares to bring Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone to the country next month.

The company will announce the change in the next two weeks, Chief Operating Officer Nadir Mohamed told Bloomberg News after addressing a conference in Toronto. Customers are using handsets more to surf the Web, download music and watch videos, which prompted the switch, he said.

Rogers reported a 47 percent increase in first-quarter wireless data sales, its fastest-growing source of revenue. The Toronto-based company said this month that it would start selling the newest version of the iPhone July 11. The Web-surfing handset, unveiled June 9, can download Web pages at double the speed of the older model.

``The iPhone is meaningless unless you radically change the pricing plan,'' Brownlee Thomas, a Montreal-based analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said in an interview. Changes to wireless data pricing are ``long overdue,'' she said.

Rogers rose 2 cents to C$41.11 at 4:10 p.m. in Toronto Stock Exchange trading. The shares have declined 8.6 percent this year.

In the U.S., iPhone users spend almost twice as much a month as AT&T Inc.'s typical wireless customer, Rick Lindner, the phone company's chief financial officer, said last week. The faster phone may push that figure higher, he said. AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for the Apple device.

`More Value'

``We want pricing that actually drives adoption,'' Mohamed said. ``What you will see categorically is more value.''

Thomas said that at current Canadian rates, using the iPhone could cost users many hundreds of dollars a month. Mohamed denied that Canadians pay too much for wireless service.

Although Rogers offers some plans for unlimited e-mail and text-messaging, it doesn't sell unlimited Internet downloads at a flat rate as do some U.S. carriers, including AT&T.

Rogers is relying on data services to counter slowing subscriber growth. The company predicted in January that it will add between 550,000 and 625,000 wireless subscribers in 2008, fewer than the 650,600 the company added last year. Mohamed wouldn't say whether Rogers will change its forecast to reflect iPhone sales.

Rogers customers would get ``more for less'' under the new plan, Scotia Capital analyst John Henderson said in an e-mail. ``They want to drive penetration.'' Toronto-based Henderson predicts the company's shares will outperform peers.

According to an April report by Merrill Lynch & Co., about 61 percent of Canadians own wireless handsets, lowest among the 23 developed countries the company tracks. The U.S. has 84 percent penetration.

Rogers may also be trying to head off new competition arising from an airwave auction, Thomas said. The sale, designed by the Canadian government to draw new players into the country's wireless market, may end as early as this week, according to Capital Markets analyst Dvai Ghose in Toronto.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Fournier in Toronto at Cfournier3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 16, 2008 16:26 EDT