Canadians Face Quite a Wait for iPhone Service

iPhones won't be coming to Canada for a while
by Fiona Anderson, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, July 13, 2007

While the hype for iPhones have Canadians anxious to give it a go, they may have a long wait, as the price of cell phone service in Canada makes iPhones unaffordable, according to industry consultants and academics.

Apple sells experiences, not products, says Richard Smith, a professor with the school of communication at Simon Fraser University. And the experience of an iPhone is to get access to unlimited data without worrying how much each download costs, he said.

In the United States, AT&T has won the exclusive right to service iPhones with phone service that includes unlimited data starting at $59.99 US.

The plans get more expensive as voice minutes increase, but the data (e-mail and web access) in all plans remains unlimited.

Smith tags the data portion at $20 US because that's what current AT&T customers have to pay to upgrade their service to an iPhone.

Canadian cell phone companies don't have any plans that come even close to that, Smith said. Telus spokesman Jim Johannsson pointed to Telus's Spark 25 package as its best offering for unlimited web access.

For $25 a month users can browse to over 100 selected sites, which isn't quite unlimited but does mean customers don't have to worry about cost each time they browse.

But for truly unlimited access to e-mail and web - the experience iPhone is trying to provide - Canadians would have to shell out more like $100 a month, and that still wouldn't be unlimited Smith said.

And until Canadian companies can offer cheaper plans, iPhone won't be coming to Canada, Smith said.

"Apple would never agree to deliver a phone that people couldn't use," Smith said.