News

We've been covering the Kindle quite a bit here lately (including a story on its launch in Canada and a review of the device ). The device finally came to Canada this week, and while Amazon executives said they were very excited about bringing the product here, there were some topics they just refused to talk about. One of those topics is the identity of the Canadian carrier powering the Kindle's wireless capabilities. Neither the major Canadian carriers (Bell, Rogers and Telus), nor Amazon, nor AT&T (Amazon's carrier partner in the U.S.) would say who's providing wireless service. We can't even tell you why they were all so cagey about this detail.

Nonetheless, we think we have an answer, although nobody will confirm it.

Amazon has been pointing people to this coverage map to show where the Kindle's wireless functions -- which include access to the online Kindle bookstore -- will work. Take a look at the Canadian portion of the map.

Boy, that coverage area sure looks a lot like what Rogers offers .

Here are coverage maps for Bell and Telus (I can't vouch for the latter, which is hosted on a third-party site and may not include all of the Telus coverage area).

I suspect the reason Amazon and the carriers won't actually come out and confirm who's running the wireless network is either because the deal isn't exclusive, and so more carriers may jump on the bandwagon at a later date, and/or because none of the companies believe it matters whether users know who's providing the service, since Kindle customers don't pay for wireless access on the device, it's just built-in. The idea is that users won't care, for the same reason they don't care who provides the wireless access on a payment device at a restaurant or store, for example.

But there are some real ramifications for Kindle users in Canada, and they almost certainly have to do with the Amazon-carrier relationship.

In the United States, Kindle users can browse the web on their device for free. In Canada, Kindle users can only access the Wikipedia site; every other website is blocked.

I had an e-mail conversation the other day with Charles Golvin, a principal analyst with Forrester Research, about why website access is virtually cut off in Canada. Mr. Golvin cautions his opinion on the matter is simply speculation, but here's his insight:

"I guess it is primarily a pricing impasse, with Amazon and Rogers (I’m assuming) unable to arrive at an acceptable cost for generic data access. Rogers may be asking a high price because it doesn’t care much for the model, where it’s an invisible pipe and Amazon entirely owns the customer relationship. It’s easier to accept the responsibility for the Kindle traffic when it is constrained to delivery of books, which place a very light and fairly predictable load on the network, than it is for Web browsing which is much more difficult to constrain."