iPhone Launch Nears, Canada Waits

When the iPhone comes out on June 29th Canadians will have to watch from the sidelines. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Let them work out the bugs before bringing it to Canada, and it’s likely that by the time we see it here it will be the second generation. Rogers, the GSM carrier will be the one to sell the iPhone. CDMA networks like SaskTel and Bell will have to hope that not too many people make the switch.

Canadian companies, which typically don’t communicate very well with their customers, are virtually silent on this whole thing. I did manage to scrape up this tidbit from the Globe & Mail in which the Rogers CFO, Bill Linton indicated he has no idea when the iPhone might be coming to Canada. In fact he admitted he hasn’t really spoken to anyone at Apple at all. Good grief. We can only hope it doesn’t take as long as getting movies and television shows in the iTunes store. We’re still waiting on that, by the way. But I digress.

The more global we become, the more technology starts stamping out borders, the farther behind Canada lags. Canadian companies are so afraid of competition they beg the government to step in a protect them (under the guise of protecting Canadian Culture, whatever that is). On the other hand, they want de-regulation when it serves them (i.e. don’t make us produce Canadian television shows).

I’m not suggesting that the iPhone availability had anything to do with Rogers. Clearly they have to wait for Apple to give the go-ahead and they are a little busy right now getting the phone out in the U.S. But it is a sign of things to come. I saw a big ad in a Canadian Best Buy flyer for the XBOX 360 and how you can use it to download movies. Good luck with that, just like with iTunes it only works in the U.S. All because Canadian companies don’t want us having another way of getting content. They are the gatekeepers. What they don’t seem to realize is while they are busy patrolling their gate, technology is tunneling under it. I completely agree with Matthew Ingrim on this. He calls it geo-gating and it is dumb.

UPDATE…We finally have a date the iPhone will arrive in Canada. July 11th, 2008.