After holding up the Canadian launch of the iPhone for more than a year, Rogers finally released the pricing plan for the coveted Apple product and guess what? Canadians - at least those fool enough to sign up for a 3-year deal costing more than $3,000 total - will continue to pay among the highest mobile communication rates in the world.

Not the Western world. Not the developed world. The WORLD world.

But the good news is that the rip-off-rates announced by Rogers for the iPhone have begun a groundswell of complaints about the protectionist barriers that let Canada's telcos rake in huge profits (Rogers' $898 million profit on sales of $2.5 billion) while relegating the rest of us to stoopid consumer status.

The worst of it isn't the pain of paying more than the rest of the world to communicate while on the go. The worst of it is that by delaying mobile adoption - and that statistics are clear that mobile communication adoption in Canada is lagging - we become late adopters.

So does that matter? You bet it does. The early adopters have the best opportunity to become producers of the next generation of products and services in the mobile world. But thanks to protected pricing for the telcos, we've been forced to wait around until most of those seats are filled. The seats that are left are for consumers, and that's not the section you want to be in if you care about Canada's economic future.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca