ehPhone.

We here at Macanuck are proud to bring you this breaking news, well before anyone else does: Rogers has announced it is bringing the iPhone to Canada.

Yes, we are pleased to be the ones to bring you this exclusive story; all our hard work and dedication developing contacts at the major companies has paid off. 

Of course, as I've mentioned before, while much of the population lives in urban areas, some of us live in rural areas, where Roger's network don't go. So while I am excited about this, I do not forsee an iPhone in my immediate future. Unless, you know, Apple were to announce that the rumoured 3G phone will also be CDMA. And carried by Telus. 

Thank you. You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives.

Edit: Mostly Lisa weighs in on the iPhone coming to Canada. A true patriot, that girl....

Daily Reading: iPhone Rumour again

Today's daily reading: speculation by the Toronto Star that Rogers is planning an iPhone launch sometime in summer. 

The most telling quote: "An Apple spokesman declined to comment." Why do people even bother trying to get a comment out of Apple anymore?

Me? If it goes through, I hope it's a non-exclusive deal. We've got the spectrum auction coming to completion in the next little while, and a good chance that there will be at least some competition in the marketplace, which will mean that Roger might be a little more willing to concede some points. Or better yet, have the iPhone carried by someone who is not Rogers.

Daily Reading: Net Neutrality raises its head in Canada.

This has been going on for a few weeks, but the Tyee, one of my favourite BC-centric, online news sources has an article that summarizes the whole debate nicely. For more info, you can pop over to Michael Geist's site, or neutrality.ca

Define Unlimited.

Well, in my dictionary, Unlimited means: not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity or extent.

However, in the immortal words of on Indigo Montoyez: "I do not think that word means what Rogers thinks it means."

NEW! Adding Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan* to your voice plan provides:

Unlimited on-device mobile browsing access to your favourite social communities like Facebook & MySpace, news, sports and entertainment sites all on the go for one flat monthly fee!
Access to search the mobile Internet with Yahoo! Search and Google
Access to information sites like Yahoo! Canada, Canada.com, Windows Live, The Weather Network, Lavalife Mobile and more!
Protection against high pay-per-use data charges while surfing the mobile Internet

Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing Plan
Monthly Fee Includes
$7 Unlimited On-Device Mobile Browsing*

So. Sounds good so far. Let's look at the exceptions.

This plan includes unlimited on-device mobile browsing only and is only available on select phones (PDAs such as Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, PC cards and non-Rogers certified devices are not eligible).

No iPhone. Fair enough, as it isn't available in Canada.

Data usage incurred on ineligible devices or incurred while tethering (using device as wireless modem for computer) or incurred using non-Rogers (3rd party) applications downloaded to your device will be subject to pay-per-use charges of 5 cents/KB. A 3-year term service agreement is required for Rogers Vision devices.

Alright. I can't use the phone as a tethered modem. Seems a little limiting (the walls of this unlimited deal are quickly closing in), but what about the non-Rogers applications?

3rd party applications are applications like Yahoo! Go or Google Maps. These are non-Rogers applications which may be downloaded to the device and incur data charges at a rate of 5¢/KB.

Oh-kay. So what are Rogers apps anyway? Not having a Rogers phone, I'm not sure, but basically what I'm hearing is this is not unlimited. Ars Technica points out that you are limited in your unlimitedness to 2000 text messages and 1000 picture or video messages.

All this does not bode well for those fanboys chomping at the bit waiting for an iPhone to come to Canada. If this is the plan in place if the iPhone comes to Rogers, I can forsee a few $1000 bills in the first month, and a whole host of irate customers....

But price of plans, according to the analysts, has always been one of the big sticking points for Apple. While it is good to see Rogers moving in the right direction, I doubt it is far enough.

Is T-Mobile behind Niagara Networks

Okay. 

So I've mentioned before that there's rumours of T-Mobile making a bid for some of that sweet Canadian Spectrum. Trouble is, the auction rules state that the company doing the bidding has to be Canadian. 

We've also mentioned that Niagara Networks Inc. has come out of the blue to bid on a huge swatch of that spectrum.

CBC has put two and two together, and come up with a question: Is there a bigger Telecom backing Niagara? They mention both T-Mobile and AT&T as possible backers, but the official word is "No comment."

My money is on T-Mobile, just because that's the way I read the T-leaves. But I could be completely wrong. 

Any way you shake it, a new player in the Canadian market would hopefully generate a bit of competition, and rates might come down. 

The fact that both T-Mobile and AT&T have iPhone contracts in their respective countries has no bearing on my interest in this story. Honest. 

What I think'd be even more interesting would be if Apple were found to be backing a play for some spectrum. That would go a long way to helping me with my current theory that Apple doesn't really care about the Canadian Market. 

A closer look at the iPhone video

So, a lot of the folks over at ehMac are looking at the fact that the iPhone demoed in this video has French Canadian built in as a language preference as not having much weight. They don't see it as an imminent release of the iPhone.

So I went and watched the video all the way though (rather than stopping at the point where French Canadian pops up), and noticed that not the guy who does the video goes thumbing through the Region Format Menu, which has date and time options for different countries.

Here are the countries listed, followed by whether they have the iPhone:

Zimbabwe No

UK Yes 

US Yes 

Us Virgin Islands No

South Africa No

Singapore No

Philippines No

Pakistan No

New Zealand No

Malta No

Ireland Yes

India No

Hong Kong SAR China No

Canada No

Botswana No

Belgium No

Australia No

A couple things to note:

Germany and France, both of which have the iPhone, are not on the list.

A whole whack of countries that don't have the iPhone are. 

Is this setting up for a planned roll out? Is this just a standard list of countries that the Mac supports, or is this just someone pulling our leg, yet again, with a fake video?

Well, if you open up the International Pane and select formats, you'll note that the short list of Regions is as listed above. However, if you look next to it, there is a check button that say "show all regions" that allows you to see about a billion other countries and regions. Is it in the video? Survey says, no. So, what does that mean? One option is that this is a fake, a video or a website designed to look like what it might look like. Of course, the video doesn't show the top of the screen, so there is a chance that the "show all regions" is at the top, and this really is 2.0 software.

But, again, it is the standard list from the International Preference Panel. Does the fact that Zimbabwe is listed mean that the iPhone is heading for the streets of Harare? Or is this just a standard format menu for all mac devices? Either one is acceptable, but neither one really sells me on the fact that the iPhone is coming to Canada. 

Rogers may decide to negotiate with Apple, knowing that there may be competition coming down the pipes, but I suspect they'll wait and see what happens with the spectrum auction before caving under.

Still, that would be a coup for a new cell phone provider: We're new, and we've got the iPhone, with data plans starting at a really low price. Now that's the way to enter the market with a bang....

100,000 new apps and nothing to put them on....

The big news of the last few days? 100,000 downloads of the iPhone SDK.

Now, I'm not expecting everyone who downloaded it to build an app (there's probably more than a few gawkers, just wanting to see what the fuss is about), but still, isn't this a bit ridiculous? Is this what passes for news? Last week, a whole bunch of sites were doing live updates from Apple's iPhone SDK event. LIVE UPDATES. For an SDK. 

I don't see what the big deal is. 

Of course, if the iPhone were available in Canada, I'da been hitting refresh on the Engadget's live update every couple of minutes (or Macworld's, just like Andy did...), but until the iPhone comes to Canada, AND until Rogers or T-Mobile comes to Tumbler Ridge (or more likely, until there is a CDMA version of the iPhone), this whole thing is about as meaningful as the whole Obama/Clinton thing. It has no effect on my life. 

85% of the people live in 15% of the country*

...so what's a boy (albeit a 6'4, slightly greying boy) who lives in the remaining 90% of the country to do? 

You see, yesterday it was rumoured that T-mobile might be entering the Canadian Telecom market. 

Which is great news for those of us who live in places like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver...

But Canada is a big place, with a population spread out thinly, like too little butter on too much bread. What about those of us who don't live in places where the rest of us live? In rural areas. In places where the local multiplex has less than one movie a week, because there is no multiplex. Or movie theatre. 

In places like, oh, say Saskatchewan, that isn't a problem; you stick a cell phone tower on top of a really tall barn, and boom, you have coverage for half the province. (Okay; I jest. You'd need at least four or five towers to cover the whole province...)

However, that doesn't work in someplace like BC. Take a place like, oh, say, Tumbler Ridge, BC, which, by some odd coincidence is where I live.  Population? South of 5000 people. It was only two years ago or so that we finally got cell phone service, by way of Telus. While we weren't the last place in the province to get cell phone access, we were pretty far down the list. And if you drive around the corner from town, reception goes from four bars to none in about four feet.

So, even if T-Mobile comes into Canada bearing their shiny new iPhones, chances are the service will be rolled out across the country very slowly. If their roll-out is anything like Rogers, I should expect to see the iPhone in Tumbler Ridge sometime by the turn of the next century...if I'm lucky. Heck, even if Rogers brings the iPhone out, I am still left out in the cold (and believe me, it can get chilly here) until we see a CDMA version. 

Come on, CDMA....

(*That number is like, totally made up. 70% of the population live in urban areas, while another 15% live in rural-urban areas, according to the Gov't website. I am way too lazy to look up the total land area that urban areas cover, but Im thinking it's less than 15%).