After what many characterized as "too long a wait", Apple will finally begin offering its iPhone in Canada later this year. This information comes directly from Rogers Wireless, which officially confirmed today that it has reached agreement with Apple.
 
According to industry watchers, the main reason that held back the iPhone from making its way into the Canadian market has been a combination of infrastructure incompatibilities and a lack of competition: Rogers Wireless is the only Canadian carrier operating a GSM network.

Since the first-gen iPhone operates only on GSM networks, this fact alone limited Apple's available partners in Canada to just one carrier. Furthermore, data plans have been rather pricey in Canada and Apple apparently wasn’t happy with what has been available until recently.

Since most of the iPhone’s functionality emphasizes mobile Internet usage, steep prices for data plans are believed to have stalled iPhone introduction until this drawback had been resolved. It wasn't before February that Rogers began offering more affordable unlimited data plans.

It looks like Canadians finally will be getting their hands on local iPhones soon. After all, Rogers told its customers two weeks after the iPhone announcement in January of 2007 that it was negotiating and exclusive iPhone deal for the Canadian territory.

Apple has not yet commented on a possible iPhone availability in Canada and we can only hope that Rogers’ announcement isn’t premature again.

wow.....

Apr 29, 2008 20:00     

I knew this about 4 months ago.
cabose369 report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -6

iphone are all over canada

Apr 30, 2008 11:37     

As all these articles seems to forget to mention, a large percentage of iphones (40% or more?) that apple sells are used on non-att networks - so in fact there have been iphones in canada for awhile now. Not illegal, using real carriers. Articles like this just seem to tow the north american company line that to have a phone you should always get one from a contract rather than the more typical ( worldwide) buying an unlocked phone. go to any upscale high school in canada and there are tons of iphone since day one. rogers and fido have no problem with you using them with their service since they came out. so this announcement ( and all these types of stories) should be stating you can a finally get contract iphone in canada. which is one option, but since fido offers no contract service to 10s of 1000 of current Canadian iphone users, might not be the best (and surely one you have to still wait for).

steved report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1