RTOGUY: Makes sense since if any country is known for its affordable wireless data rates it's Canada.

Truth.

Testing in a small market before moving to a large one?
Are you kidding? Clearly a communist plot because Obama.

Yeah, but the only calls that it can currently receive are from your drunk aunt complaining about Obama.

It makes sense. A lot of nasty privacy invading social control bullsh*t gets tested in Canada first.

It's like a giant petrie dish for mad scientists and dark governmental cabals.

Google Allen Memorial.

Also the the prototype for modern North American housing projects were in Toronto.

Sick stuff, dudes.

Canadians take it up the Beaver when it comes to mobile rates.

Canada is often a test market for US products and services and sometimes other countries as well. Typically, they roll out new products in some place like Manitoba, which is demographically similar to the US population or the Canadian population as a whole.

Just as movie companies can cheaply replicate American and foreign locations in, say Montreal, Vancouver or Toronto, they can test market products for foreign markets in Quebec (as a sozie for France or Europe) and Toronto (one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world with large Italian, Asian, and other populations whose tastes are similar to various ethnic and national markets, and test market products for the Anglo-American market in English Canada.

That is one good reason to test this service in Canada. The other main reason is that despite high telephone costs and less than optimal service, Canadians love the telephone and use it more than almost anybody else in the world except Finns, most of whom have Nokia phones.

It beats going out doors during the eight months a year of winter and poor dog sledding.

If Canadians take to free VoIP, so will most of the Western World and big chunks of other world markets. You can easily fight a segment of the Canadian population that will serve as a test market for almost any place except the tropical or sunny South.

Personally, I have used Google's free internet telephony service (my parent's phone showed a number in Georgia, or somewhere on the South East coast, when I call them) and I found it quite adequate for my telephone needs. In fact, the sound was as good or better than a cheap telephone.

If I could use it with my netbook as well as my laptop, it would probably be enough telephone for me although I am keeping my landline for a while yet because of 911 and the fact that it works when the power goes out, which is not necessarily true for cellphones, which can be taken down by a blackout in the area where the cellphone service is based.

This kind of free internet based telephone service might be all I would need since I don't make a lot of telephone calls and would have my phone off when it is not in use. That and a lot of data for a low stable price might be enough to lure me back into the cellphone market after twelve years. For about a year I had a contract where I paid nothing unless I used the telephone to make calls, in which case I paid through the nose. In other words I had free emergency calling. That's the most important feature of a cellphone for me, followed by good internet and good apps. I want everything about the cellphone except the telephone, which I want to be entirely under my control so I am not harassed by callers I don't want to talk to, such as canvassers, con artists, coworkers, my boss, stupid friends and family, etc.

Viva Canada. We're America's evil twin. Or maybe we're the good twin. It's hard to tell nowadays.

If you can sell something to tight-fisted Canadians you can sell it any where.

We'll glad test out your new ideas and get back to you if they are worth while. We'll just as gladly wait to see if they work and then adopt them freely, perhaps taking into account your mistakes or possible improvements.

I personally think that half of America is criminally insane and the other half is weird, wild and wonderful. I wish we did a better job sorting out which half is which, and that we were quicker to adopt and adapt some of the great ideas, products and services invented by savey American producers and consumers. The least we could do is pay you the compliment of stealing them and claiming them as our own (like the snowmobile, which was apparently invented in Wisconsin or somewhere, if by snowmobile you mean a Model T Ford on skis).

We have the good luck to be born between three chairs and to be able to choose between them like Goldilocks in the Cottage of the Three Bears. If we were wiser and better, we'd have the best of France, the UK and the US. Very often we do, but we could do better still and be more like the US, the UK and France, among other great options.

Sorry, if we let anything crappy slip through to the US domestic or world market but nobody's perfect.

I don't see KD (Kraft Dinner) being sold in the US but you do have some of those luxury ketchups that the Barenaked Ladies sing about. And I am pretty sure you can fake a mean KD with the macaroni and cheese various companies make.

Some things some people do better. Some things other people do better. Different strokes for different folks, a touch of what you fancy does the soul good, and il n'y a pas de sot métier.

Be like boy Canada! But not too much. The world would be a dull place if it were completely Canadian or completely anything. I am dubious about the commercial theory (promoted by Chapters and Indigo Books) that the world needs more Canada. I think it has got plenty. But as that famous pod person, Martha Stewart, once put it, it's a good thing for all that.

Not always a great thing. The good is enemy of the best, as the Greeks were wont to say in Ancient Times. But on the whole, I'd sooner be in Canada than wherever W.C. Fields is now.

Here's my plan, and I had to threaten to leave to get it because I was getting the same thing for 2x as much:

200 local minutes
unlimited evenings and weekends from 5 PM (local)
call display/visual voicemail (iPhone)
200 local incoming minutes
500 mb data (LTE/3G)

$56.00 plus tax.

farking Canada.