Here is a nice chart I found comparing the US – UK – Canada iPhone pricing/plans.. Shocking to see how terrible Rogers plan is..

Rogers Communications offers no details about launch date, or pricing

The wait appears to finally be over for Canadians eager to get their hands on the popular iPhone.

Nearly 10 months after the gadget was first unveiled to U.S. consumers, Rogers Communications Inc. confirmed Tuesday it has come to a deal with Apple Inc. to offer the all-in-one cellphone, iPod and Web browsing device in Canada.

Rogers, the only wireless carrier in the country with a compatible GSM network, didn’t offer details on a launch date or pricing.

“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year,” said Ted Rogers, the cable giant’s CEO, in a short statement.

“We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.”

The confirmation comes after months of guessing about a Canadian launch date for the iPhone, which is expected to compete with Research In Motion Ltd.’s line of BlackBerry smartphones.

The Star reported late last week that Rogers had been hoping to introduce the iPhone between May and July as part of a larger promotional campaign that focused on touchscreen devices.

Apple first unveiled the device in the United State last June amid a media frenzy.

Observers had speculated the delayed Canadian launch was due to difficult negotiations over pricing and a trademark dispute with Comwave Telecom Inc.

Rogers said on Tuesday its first-quarter profit more than doubled, thanks to growth in its Internet and digital cable subscriber base.

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show today, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it’s opened.

Jobs also confirmed the consumer electronics company’s foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections within 30 days after they’re released on DVD.

Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.

At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it’s .16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80-gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.

The machine doesn’t come with a built-in optical drive for reading CDs and DVDs, a feature Jobs says consumers won’t miss because they can download movies and music over the Internet and access the optical drives on other PCs and Macs to install new software. They can buy an external drive, however, that will retail for US$99.

Trading in Apple stock was heavy today, the first day of the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. It fell 5.52 per cent to $168.91 at midday.

The new laptop, which has a 13.3-inch screen and full-sized laptop keyboard, will cost US$1,799 when it goes on sale in two weeks, though Apple is taking orders now. The company’s website is already touting the machine. The price is competitive with other laptops in its market segment.

The machine helps fortify Apple’s already-sizzling Macintosh product lineup and burnish its polished image as a purveyor of cool.

Major Canadian cell carrier Telus is considering a largely unprecedented jump from a CDMA-based phone network to GSM, according to a report by the Toronto Star. Alleged industry contacts say the company has discussed the idea at board meetings and has been willing to explore the costs of rebuilding its network after recognizing that an upcoming frequency auction could tip the balance against the CDMA format. No move is certain, the purported sources say, but the ubiquitousness of GSM on international networks would help Telus’ business by adding subscribers who need GSM phones to roam in Europe and most other countries.

Bell Canada has also reportedly contemplated the idea of using GSM but is too concentrated on taking its company private, the tip adds.

A swap would dramatically reorient the Canadian cellular market. While the American cellular market is split more evenly between GSM (AT&T and T-Mobile) and CDMA (Sprint and Verizon), only Rogers Wireless and its sub-label Fido maintain a national GSM network in the more northern country. Telus offering GSM service would end Rogers’ effective monopoly of the standard in Canada and would also isolate Bell, leaving it as the only major CDMA provider.

Nonetheless, the real advantage may be in devices, both analysts and the company itself say. As roughly 80 percent of world phone users rely on GSM, more equipment is available for the network standard and often arrives sooner as well as at a lower price than equivalent CDMA models. There are “certain advantages” to a cellphone provider to explore this route, Telus chief Darren Entwistle said recently during a quarterly results call.

The iPhone in particular is considered a major blow to CDMA operators such as Telus, as the device has so far only been announced for GSM networks. Without an alternative, Apple’s handset in its current form would be virtually required to support Rogers’ network. Leaks through a Molson contest and other sources have pointed to an announcement of the iPhone for Rogers as early as the next few months and is expected to provide the lone GSM carrier with a significant edge in the market.

Time Magazine’s love affair with Apple is very well documented. This week, they named the iPhone the “Invention of the Year.”

The winning combination: The industrial design, touchscreen, the effect on the market overall, the introduction of Mac OS X on a mobile platform and the future, according to writer Lev Grossman:

“Look at the iPod of six years ago…It looks like something a caveman whittled from a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that’s going to make the iPhone look that primitive. You’ll have one in a few years…”

All of these factors point to Apple’s single greatest asset: Patience. Users clamored for an Apple-branded phone long before a hint of such a thing even existed. All the while, Apple quietly refined the design, the interface and OS X; the deal with AT&T and the iPhone’s roadmap.

The iPhone wasn’t the first mobile phone to the market, of course. Nor was the iPod the first digital music player. The technology market is populated with companies determined to be first. Apple is content to show up late to the party, but with a killer gift.