July 11th is the new Canada Day

Today, during Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced the new 3G iPhone. It’s going to be available in Canada from Rogers and Fido on July 11th.

It’s interesting to note that Fido will be selling the iPhone in Canada as well as Rogers as you can see from the screenshot below:

Unfortunately, at this time, nobody at Rogers or Fido seems to know this. Calls to both Rogers and Fido sales and customer service resulted in transfers to the clueless department. Great way to promote something this big – not tell any of your frontline staff anything. Meanwhile both the Apple Canada website and Rogers website are getting hammered with interested buyers looking for more information. I’d expect a proper press release to come out soon where they detail the pricing of their data plans so keep an eye (or subscribe) to Rogers news release page.

The phone itself will cost no more than $199US for the 8gb version so I’d expect it to be $199 Canadian. Subsidies haven’t been announced at this time but Apple said they wanted to make the phone available to more people and have reduced the cost to facilitate this.

I was at the local Apple Store to ‘watch’ the keynote coverage live with some friends (a larger crowd formed around us) and play WWDC Bingo (close but no cigar this year). Unfortunately it wasn’t broadcast via video but there was someone streaming audio via Ustream as well as a number of tech blogs had coverage. I was with a few friends and we used a 30″ Cinema Display and a fully loaded MacPro to watch the action. The store staff were pretty accommodating and kept checking in to see what was being announced. Apparently they had a computer in the back some staff was watching the updates as well but they didn’t have anything like a live feed. We were asked to turn it down a couple of times as the 3G iPhone details were spelled out by Steve….the applause was deafening on the Ustream feed.

See you in line on July 11th! Anyone want to buy a 2G iPhone?

Update: Here’s a link to Apple’s release regarding the iPhone in Canada. Still waiting for Rogers to release theirs. Thanks to Buzz for the link.

Update 2: Rogers has finally posted their news release regarding the iPhone:

Rogers and Apple to Bring iPhone 3G to Canada on July 11
WWDC SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, June 9 /CNW/ – Rogers Communications and Apple(R) today announced that the highly anticipated iPhone(TM) 3G will be available in Canada on July 11. iPhone 3G combines all the revolutionary features of iPhone with 3G networking that is twice as fast(*) as the first generation iPhone, built-in GPS for expanded location based mobile services, and iPhone 2.0 software which includes support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and runs the hundreds of third party applications already built with the recently released iPhone SDK.

“Rogers has a long history of bringing Canadians the very best in wireless services, networks and handset innovations,” said Rob Bruce, president, Rogers Wireless. “With iPhone 3G, we will provide our customers with an amazing mobile experience over Canada’s fastest wireless network.”

“We’re excited to be working with Rogers to bring iPhone 3G to Canada,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s COO. “We can’t wait to get this revolutionary phone in the hands of even more people around the world.” iPhone 3G will operate on Rogers’ High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) wireless network, the fastest mobile network in Canada. HSPA is nationally available in the top Canadian urban centers from Vancouver to Halifax, covering more than 60 percent of the population. iPhone 3G will also operate on Roger’s coast-to-coast GSM/EDGE network, proven to be the country’s most reliable wireless network. Starting July 11, iPhone 3G will sell for $199 for the 8Gb model and $299 for the 16Gb model, on a three-year plan. More details on price plans and retail availability will be available soon.

Note that it will be $199/$299 (8gb/16gb models) on a 3 year term with Rogers or Fido.

Update 3: Tod Maffin has some more info from an inside source – if true, could mean that current 1st gen iPhones may be usable on Rogers if you lock in to their data plan(s) which still hasn’t been outlined