Canada might be getting the iPhone 3G

Bear in mind folks that according to Apple's web site, the iPhone should also be available on Fido as well.

Fido is owned by Rogers, of course, but they do operate as separate carriers, and Fido has maintained some better plans for personal users.

It will be interesting to see if the rates, plans, and packages differ over on the Fido side.

yeah, yeah, we all hate Rogers, but has anyone looked into their plans lately? I am a Fido customer with an iPhone, (hacked of course) and am subscribing to an Unlimited browsing package. The cost? $7 a month. My total phone bill is about $60. I don't do much talking (150 daytime minutes, unlimited eve & weekend, unlimited incoming calls) but have the $20 value pack that includes unlimited browsing, voicemail, call id, and tons of txt. Now, I don't have an actual Roger's account, but I'm sure being from the same corporate daddy, Roger's has a similar pricing structure. It's going to be okay people...

Although I hate Rogers and their stupid "tease" for the iPhone, I do understand why. They did recently release the LG vu and N95 by Nokia which are barely similar. Throwing the iPhone up next to those 2 would ruin their chances at depleting their stock for those phones. Also, it helps them screw over potential customers who may still not know about the iPhone and buy other phones only to get angry at them after when they won't let them switch over to the iPhone.

there I said it.

I got a hold of a draft version of the Apple press release, which seems to be a bit more, emm, aggressive than the final version. Excerpt:

“Rogers has a long history of bringing Canadians the very most expensive in wireless services, networks and handset innovations,” said Rob Bruce, president, Rogers Wireless. “With iPhone 3G, we will provide our customers with an amazingly overpriced mobile experience over Canada’s fastest wireless network. We'll start by requiring contracts that are 50% longer than anywhere else in the world, and take it from there. Currently we are evaluating three possible strategies for our price plans: a) screw the customers, b) screw the customers and their mothers, c) as above, but add in the grandmothers as well.”

I believe the "something big" refers not to the iPhone but to the rate plan that they intend to slap on it.

It's ridiculous that Rogers hasn't made the details of the new wireless plans for the iPhone 3G completely public already. They have known for quite some time that Apple would be announcing the iPhone 3G yesterday. They have likely known that the international launch was July 11 because it was probably part of their agreement with Apple which they signed months ago.

I can't understand why they wouldn't want to leverage the massive hype surrounding the launch, but instead, they post an obscure graphic on their website and bury a press release with minimal pricing information.

If the data plans aren't at least somewhat similar to the US data plans I think there will be quite a bit of negative press. Unfortunately, many of us will sign up anyway. Myself included.

We should all expect to get bum raped by Rogers with the new iPhone. I've been using the original on Rogers since the first hardware unlocks, paying $60 month for a tiny amount of data, on top of my voice plan. I fully expect to be paying the same with the 3G version.

I would like to see Rogers actually support unlocked phones, (I'll pay the full price, like I did with version 1), and still use Rogers network 95% of the time, but would like the freedom to pop in an AT&T pay as you go sim when I'm in the US on vacation etc. Hell, even if it was locked to all iPhone carriers, that would be fine by me.

It will be nice to finally have visual voicemail.

CANADIANS might have the last laugh. According to Wikipedia, Rogers is capable of up to 7.2 mps download speeds, which is faster than my cable modem.

I would think they are too cheap and lazy to do a proper update on the Rogers website. As it looks now, about as exciting as a new Leafs uniform. I am thrilled with the 3G aspect though, having been in Japan off and on since 1998, I have only had 3G. Recently bought a phone with Telus and have been amazed at the lack of service and features. So far behind here in Canada, Japan cell phones kick butt, as do those in Taiwan, S. Korea and China; all I have personally used.

So, what shade of blue and design will the new Leafs covers be? Who cares? Not I, Habs fan for life.

KK

We knew that iPhones in Canada were official more than a month before the keynote, in fact TUAW reported it: http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/29/its-official-iphones-in-canada/

What we don't have of course is details. I would like to know just how much dear leader Ted is going to charge so that I can go back to being definitively pissed and jealous of our southern neighbours and their iPhones, rather than have this faint glimmer of hope that he'll be reasonable.

Also, I suspect the reason that graphic looks nothing like an iPhone is that Rogers had absolutely no idea what the new one would look like. AT&T hadn't seen the original up until a week or two before MWSF07, so I doubt Rogers got any sneak peek at the 3G.