iPhone is coming to Canada: Wireless carriers rejoice.

James

June 11, 2008

Mathew Ingram has rightly pointed out that the iPhone as a platform just will not fly in Canada because of the excessive rates for unlimited data plans. To use an iPhone to its fullest requires massive amounts of network traffic to move all those maps, photos, tunes, and email in and out of the device. Wireless carries must be salivating at the thought of their customers using services like MobileMe.

The same is true for Blackberry. I love my Blackberry. I love using it. I love that it is Canadian. I love that it is from Waterloo. It royally sucks that I can’t use it to its fullest potential without paying several hundred dollars a month. Sometimes when I snap a good photo with my Curve’s camera, I feel slight anxiety about whether I should email it directly from the device because I might go over my data limit. Its like deciding not to go on a long car trip because you might exceed the allowable mileage defined in your lease. Waiting until I get home to transfer data from my state-of-the-art wireless device over a USB connection is bogus.

How is this going to change? Someone new needs to get into the wireless carrier game in Canada and shake up the oligopoly. I don’t know if there is anything other than desire preventing this, but I would love to see someone like RIM be a new disruptive player and offer a flat $30/month for unlimited data. Of course getting people to switch carriers can be a trick since many contracts contain the poison pill of requiring you to payout the remainder (or portion of the remainder) of your service plan if you cancel. So, a truly disruptive move by a new (or existing player) would have to include a strategy to ease this pain. Maybe something like swallowing all or some of the cancellation penalty?

I haven’t run any numbers so I have no idea if this is viable but I am certain that people hate the big fees in Canada because they know it is extraordinarily cheaper in other countries. There is a big pain out there. Big pain means big opportunity. But in this case, you need BIG money (RIM money?) to get in the game.