I'm going to be on CTV Newsnet again, this afternoon at 3:15PM PST, live with Marcia MacMillan. Below are a few notes and links, I'll clean this up and post a link to the clip once it's wrapped. I talked about the iPhone last time, and somehow I think it's going to come up again.

in fact, Rogers is the only firm NOT charging for incoming texts, they now have a decent data plan, they have the high end Nokia phones, AND they have the iPhone.

Only North America charges for incoming text messages -- Europe and Asia have always been free.

via Ian Bell - http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html - "SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined."

Lots more from Ian, like "I could personally store-and-forward all of Canada’s SMS traffic myself via my Novus broadband in Yaletown, and it would have limited impact on my BitTorrenting". Oh, right, and of course the fact that SMS effectively is NO extra load on carriers - "As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred." - http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/06/19/how-sms-works/

via Yule Heibel - Productivity is boosted by mobile - "They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year" - http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/how-mobile-boosts-productivity.html

Bell and Telus being called before Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry - http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/07/bell_telus_called_before_federal_indu... - of course, I'm going to mention C-61 and cellphone locking that Mr. Prentice has a hand in

Update: I was off at a photowalk this evening and am just getting back. My segment was quite short, but I'm glad I got a C-61 mention in. Thanks to Mr. iPhone John Biehler for digging up the direct link to my clip: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/text-charges/#clip65669

Looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet at 12:15pm today, talking about Rogers bringing the iPhone to Canada.

Of course, the funny thing here is that there are many many people in Canada who already have the iPhone, in its "unlocked" edition. John Biehler's iPhone category is my source for all the latest in unlocking and cool applications.

The rumour seems to think that part of the delay and secrecy is because of the possibility that we might get the "new" version of the iPhone, with 3G (which is a faster data network connection). The other rumours about the new model (or models? maybe a "business" version to compete with RIM's BlackBerry?) are things like a much upgraded camera, or even a front mounted camera for video calling.

I'm genuinely happy that we're getting the iPhone "for real" in Canada, but I'm worried about a) the price of the contract and b) the length of any contract from Rogers. We're in a monopoly situation here, since there aren't any other GSM providers in Canada. Expect Telus and Bell to start heavily pushing the HTC Touch and various consumer BlackBerry devices like the Pearl.

Update: here's a direct link to my video clip.