When Will iPhone be Available in Canada?
Posted by Jon Lee in Offtopic, Personal, tags: Apple, canada, contest, garylee, iPhone
The iPhone is estimated to be available in Canada in late 2007 to early 2008 and will only be available in a GSM version (from Rogers Wireless). This means CDMA Bell and Telus users won’t have access to it. And judging by what has happened in the past with Canadian phone releases, Canadians can expect this $600 dollar device to debut at at least $700-800 even after it’s been out on the market for a while.
Now although I’m not a big Apple fan and instead prefer my PC and watching movies on my Windows Mobile Smartphone, I must admit the iPhone is a very nice piece of eye candy. Not wanting to wait over 6 months to get my hands on one, my internet marketing friend Gary Lee is giving me a free iPhone. Well he’s not giving it to me, but I have a good feeling about winning his contest since I always tend to win useless things.
This is not to say the iPhone is useless but in Canada where data plans are outrageously expensive ($50 a month for a measly 5 megabytes or $100 a month for the “unlimited” plan where unlimited = 25 megabytes), having an iPhone would be just like carrying any other PocketPC that can play music. Here’s hoping Canadian telecommunication companies will pick up its act and offer true unlimited plans at the US rate of around $20 a month!
I must applaud Gary Lee’s generosity though and wish him the best of luck on his new golf equipment community project. If your girlfriend or wife gets mad at you for spending too much time with your iPhone, simply browse over to MsDanielle’s deals site and find some free online coupons to buy them something nice!
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Gotta love Rogers’ wireless data plans. I’ve had a 5 MB plan for several years so that I can use MSN Messenger and IRC from my PDA while on the road, and I’ve never been able to figure out why it’s so darned expensive. The 5 cents for every KB over the limit makes even less sense (and I won’t even go into the whole “25 MB is unlimited” rant).
For the moment, I don’t think the mobile carriers will drop the prices any. With Telus unable to keep their DNS servers online for more than a day, and Bell being almost bought out by people who know nothing about making services affordable for non-teachers, I doubt Rogers (or their Fido subsidiary) will feel any pressure to lower their data prices.
What I find interesting, though, is that Rogers is using VOIP technologies for many of their calls. Considering how a 5 minute conversation uses approximately 400 KB of data (at the standard 64kbps audio encoding), one would think that the distinction between voice and data would be more blurred. Add to this the fact that voice conversations require a higher QoS than data transfers, and it would only make sense that the voice conversations themselves should be more expensive.
Hopefully someone who works for a wireless data company can shed some light as to why wireless data is so expensive in the Land of the Free
I must say that the iPhone design and functions looks really cool. Steve did hell of a job with it. It’s just about the capabilities that upsets me sometime though.
“This means CDMA Bell and Fido users won’t have access to it.”
Fido — owned by Rogers — is GSM, not CDMA. You must be thinking of Telus.
Thanks Michael, I did mean Telus — I get Fido and Telus mixed up all the time. Edited my post, thanks!
If this thing is as cool as it looks on tv me and my wife will be changing phone carriers to get an iPhone. I think this will be as big as an Ipod
Just hope that the price eventually goes down…
[...] Blog « When Will iPhone be Available in Canada? Jul 15 [...]
Which capabilities in particular?
I really like the full screen internet browsing features.
IE should really get on that. Although Opera supports it I think so WM users aren’t completely out of luck.
I’m not so sure about that, I think it’s biggest hindrance is the hefty price tag and the monthly fee that must go with it (data/phone plan)!
Yeah but at the same time this is a new market product i remember when the Blackberry came out it was $695 and the word out was it would fail because of the high price, and they where wrong. If you are a business person there is no doubt thisphone would be an asset
I don’t own an iPhone but I use the AT&T Edge network for Internet access. It’s very slow and seems to be even more congested since the release of the iPhone.
I hope Rogers Wireless can provide you guys with a better Data Service.
AT&T does have a faster 3G data access… but the iPhone does not support it.
Have you seen the new Ipod touch? Is it just me or does the WiFi part just scream hack me?
[...] revealed! Gary and Danielle (along with a special guest) made a video of the winner announcement. I entered the contest too, but unfortunately I didn’t win. Did you win? Only one way to find [...]
When will the Iphone be available in Canada. Right now dealers are taking advantage of the fact that it is not available in Canada and are selling it for 800$ LOCKED!!!! that’s absolutely ridiculous! It’s not even unlocked at that price!
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New 16Gb version of the iPhone out now
You gotta admit even with the hefty price tag, the inability to find them, and the various problems reported it is a sweet looking phone with amazing capabilities.