Apple not happy with Rogers?

In what can only be called an unprecedented consumer response to perceived gouging and monopolistic practices, it seems Rogers, Canada's ONLY GSM capable carrier, and sole iPhone distributor, has had it's legs taken out from under it. According to this story, it seems Apple has decided to shift a large number of inventory of iPhone's destined for Canada, diverting them to the EU and other markets.

In a previous story posting, I wrote about a little site called RuinedIphone.com which was asking Canadian consumers upset with the unfair price plans to sign a petition and even write letters to the Federal Competition Bureau, along with all the top exec's it could email addresses for inside of Apple and Rogers. Well, the petition, at time of writing this blog, is up to 43,000+. That is a HUGE number of people for any petition to wate their time and provide their contact info. The story has also becomes a bit an international story, being picked up CNN and other news sites.

Canada has a long history of creating monopolies, from cable companies, phone companies, and even media companies who block access to services which in the USA are common like DirecTV. I have always been astonished that we as Canadians let our so called regulator the CRTC continue to encourage these monopolistic practices. In a day and age when free-trade and international barriers are coming down faster then you can say "free-trade" - here in Canada we continue to live in a very tightly controled monopolistic environment. Take the airline service here in Canada. We basically only have 1 national airline, Air Canada. Why can't we adopt the open skies type of arrangement that is prevalent in Europe? Fares here are the highest in the G8 - and guess who benefits? The single company who controls the flow of traffic. Anyhow, back to the iPhone...

I'm glad that as consumers we have spoken up on this issue, and hopefully through the purchase power, or lack thereof in this case, we can affect change in a perenial monopolistic company - Rogers. I would so love to be able to get DirecTv legally and give them the bird...