Hah! If the rumour holds up, that’ll teach Rogers. It’s one of the very few petitions I’ve signed and it would be great to see it have an impact!

I’m so glad that it happened. Rogers deserves this!!

Blame Canada! Did you know that a recent study done by Queens University found that 5 out of 5 Canadians say eh?

How many stores does Apple have in Canada?

How many do Rogers & Fido have?

Good for you Apple! I hate not having the iPhone in Canada but if it is to prevent Rogers from screwing Canadians I am all for it. I am considering canceling ALL of our company Fido accounts. The only problem is that the only real alternative is Telus, another ’screw over whoever we can’ company.

All Canadian cell providers overcharge, underserve, and offer spotty coverage. I’d love to see smart hardware providers give them the gears WAY more often. Then we might get plans that are actually functional for users… which I think, in turn, would benefit cell companies.

Nothing could make me happier.

Rogers needs to realize that their archaic view on data plans needs to come to an end.

Dont they see the market potential of the iPhone?

Doesn’t Rogers realize that they would make more money by charging less. Their plans are prohibitively expensive. I know a half dozen people (including myself) who would sign up for various smart phones, and IPhone type devices in a second if the prices were lower.

I was pushing for a company IPhone once released, but when news of Rogers’ plans came out, I was told I would have to wait until the plan’s price dropped.

Jobs doesn’t like if somebody else rips off his customers

Rogers could have taken this as an opportunity to totally bury all their competitors by, you know, offering a better device with better service at competitive prices.

Instead they chose short term financial gain and tons of bad press.

Typical.

This is non news (not breaking news). Check this link from 27 of June - two weeks ago:

http://todmaffin.com/iphonerumours

“Will I be able to buy the iPhone at Apple Stores?
No. They will be sold at Rogers/Fido stores only.”

Furthermore, the Apple.ca website has always posted as places to but the iPhone as being rogers/fido stores.

Ah what a little bit of investigating could do.

Ummm, this isn’t news. I mean, I’m all for the Rogers bashing, but we knew pretty soon after WWDC that you were only going to be able to get the iPhone at Rogers/Fido outlets and not Apple Stores.

See: http://todmaffin.com/iphonerumours published on 27 June 08, for example.

Heh, scooped.

This is definitely welcome news. Rogers is such a short sighted company. This was the ideal opportunity for it to literally tear customers away from Telus and Bell with an exclusive phone offering.

As a result of this BS, I wouldn’t buy a Rogers iPhone if someone put a gun to my head. I don’t care if they start giving them away for free now…

Apple has 6 stores in Canada in 4 cities. I don’t think this is really a big deal.

http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/

Mike

Either way, TechCrunch writing about it will help. Maybe Rogers will rethink their plans.

Stevie boy may in fact change the course of the pathetic socialist Canadian telecom industry.

This is music to my ears.

It sucks that I’m using a Rogers internet connection to type this because it’s the only reliable service in my area but, woot!

http://www.thomaspurves.com/20.....ta-access/

Canadain IT is a mafia. You can join this organization and go tape meetings. This is the equivalent of the hall of doom. itac.ca Rogers, Bell an the rest of the players that lock up the Canadian govt are there and so is the Canadian govt. If you really wanna change something, join ITAC and secretly tape the meetings with the govt of Canada.

Show them on youtube to everyone.

If this is true, then my respect for Apple just shot up considerably. Eat your heart out Ted (Rogers).

I think Apple is doing the right thing. Here in Canada we are getting screwed over!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t89WwcsOj9U

This is what Bell and Rogers are working on next for you Canada. Sit at home scared and take it like Canadians.

This is a tempest in a tea-pot. I think I read in the original Rogers Press release that the phone would only be available at Roger/Fido stores. As stated earlier with there only being 6 stores in 4 cities it’s no big deal.

@21 I hope you realize that all of Athene’s videos are pure bullshit.

Good thing this eBay listing wasn’t for Canada, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA.....0235287333

Canadian consumers tend to be better informed & more demanding than us Americans. I was quite impressed when I lived there.

And that’s basically what’s it’s going to boil down to here b/c Rogers does suck (most CA carriers do) & it will continue to charge what it can get away with.

What the Canadian consumer will let them get away with.

Apple’s decision doesn’t seem connected to Rogers (can’t see site blocked here) & it may actually just push more business to Rogers - so I don’t see how this is a bad thing for them.

Apple seems to have just shrugged & washed their hands more than anything else — though I don’t see what they could do w/o continued consumer complaints & boycotting.

This looks like a rumor.

http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/buy/

Even CrunchGear is saying this may not be true. They link here:

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.c.....o-be-true/

Hey John,

I live in Belgium. This was announced on the news a few hours ago:

Apple iPhone available on Friday.

No surprise here, but it comes unlocked, without a dataplan!!

As you may or may not know, you can’t sell a phone over here together with a dataplan because it’s illegal. Meaning, Apple will sell an unlocked iPhone over here and I can use whatever mobile phone operator I want.
Apple signed a deal with Mobistar, which is a mobile phone operator over here.
You can buy the phone in a Mobistar store.
But Apple will also allow its resellers to sell the iphone!!
I’m a Mobistar customer so I don’t think I will move to another service if the price of the dataplan is fair, but I think we might see some Belgians who export the iphone!
All depends on the price of the iphone. It will be higher than anywhere else in the world. I don’t think it will come cheap.

I have to say I’m likely to buy one because I’m a Mac guy who needs a new phone, but to be honest, I want a smartphone who runs on Google’s Android.

Only one link you need to look towards IPhone in Canada

http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/

Joy Of Tech has some good cartoons up

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html

@10 was right

look on the apple.ca site

http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/buy/

Rethink Rogers!

@j,

The unlocked iPhone prices for Belgium are announced.
8G Version - EUR 525
16G Version - EUR 615

It’s not really breaking if it’s yesterday’s news, John. It was all over Techmeme yesterday.

Thanks Sudharsan. The 16G version is mine!

I’m not sure if the Canadians will be interested in buying an unlocked iphone at these prices though. The Euro is too expensive and the shipping expenses won’t help much

It’s official : I have no plans to export unlocked iPhones.

Look at it this way: it is a way for RIM to sell some BB Bolds.

* tightens my tinfoil hat*

..and those are CANADIAN DOLLARS!! Yowsa!

Am I missing something? The Rogers pricing doesnt seem any less fair than AT&T’s pricing.

We have good reasons, we aren’t bitching.

This is yet another example of poor access to some of the best products and services that that Canadians face with in an uncompetitive regulated industry. Canada needs more competition to deliver more competitive products and services into the market. Years of regulated markets and the pressures of regulatory bodies like the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission) are killing Canadian consumers. It’s time that markets and consumers determine what they want and not an elite few.

What else is new? Amazon.ca offers maybe a 10th of the cool products Amazon.com. Being Canadian in a tech world means always being a lot behind. You can’t get anything really cool here.

It makes no sense cause our economy is good. We have money to spend, but nobody cares about the 51rst state…..:(

If this turns out to be true then I hope the other big phone companies take notice….

Jobs and Apple are so freaking arrogant. They need to make tech stuff, and stay the hell out of the cell phone provider’s business. After shaking down AT&T for a cut of the monthly deal the last time (more power to them), they decided to make their money on the device (hello!?) they still want to f*** around with the free market.

This is just absolutely outstanding. I hope Rogers takes a cue.

I hope this is true… it’s important for everyone to know what it really costs to have an iphone since the $199 is nothing compared to your monthly.
We built a quick iphone plan advisor here http://www.billshrink.com/iphone and you can see the review over at crunchgear.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008.....-purchase/

More stellar non-journalism from TechCrunch. Not only in Canada, but in other international stores will you not be able to buy an iPhone in Apple stores. This has been established since WWDC. But you should stop reading this now, and get back to mashing the panic button.

Hank, no market is completely free, and Apple isn’t taking a cut in their latest deal with AT&T. You should write for TC.

i have bought a Rogers iPhone in canada, its ok…

Todd, I didn’t say Apple was getting a cut of THIS iPhone deal… read the post before you comment. I said they did LAST time and this time around they decided to get their money up front from equipment sales. I guess you don’t have to be able to read to make comments around here… shees.

Professional iPhone 3G video Converter has new released. This multifunctional iPhone 3G video Converter including 6 iPhone 3G format and can convert video to iPhone 3G MP4, MOV and rip video audio to iPhone 3G WAV.

Haha thank god i love hockey so much which is the only thing i like about the joke of a country… It really does suck though lol