Bell, Telus to Carry the iPhone in Canada Next Month

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Bell and Telus will carry the iPhone in Canada as early as next month. However, neither Bell nor Telus will offer discounts on the iPhone itself. This means that the field of competition lies in service and plan pricing, both of which expose weaknesses in Rogers' status quo: their iPhone pricing is, well, pricey; and their service leaves a lot to be desired. Anecdotally, whenever I attempt to use their website, I encounter at least one major error, usually involving my bill being unavailable (or invisible), or links to my account being broken. Also, their browser compatibility warnings tend to carry the wrong text, so you don't know that your issue is browser-based. The phone reps are pretty nice, though.

Many of us were wondering how this would work, since both Bell and Telus are CDMA?TDMA carriers, and the iPhone is a HSPA/GSM handset (i.e. it has that little chip thingie, aka a SIM card). Well, wonder no more! Bell and Telus teamed up to share construction costs for a rival HSPA network, which runs at about $1 billion. This could probably be covered by Canadian residents downloading one Youtube video each, Jordan says spitefully. We in the Frozen North are infamous for our outrageously expensive mobile phone plans, since we have a huge geographical region that's sparsely populated.

While other smartphones are catching up with the iPhone in terms of features (the Palm Pre is actually better, with its multitasking options), but the iPhone is the gadget that drives customers to sign those multi-year contracts, and Canada's other mobile service providers want in.