Amazon.com announced today that the Kindle is now available to Canadians... but without some key features.
"We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we're excited to make Kindle available to our customers there," said Ian Freed, vice-president of Kindle, in a statement. "Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds."
According to an Amazon spokesperson, Canadians will be able to wirelessly download books, magazines and newspapers over a 3G cellular network called Whispernet on AT&T's global network. Unfortunately the Kindles' web browser and blog subscription service will not work in Canada.
So what was the holdup? That's not entirely clear, though Amazon was reportedly shopping around among Canadian telecoms for a wireless partner. In the end, Amazon said AT&T, which provides 3G wireless for all the other international Kindles, is providing the same service in Canada.
CBC is reporting that Rogers and Telus wouldn't confirm whether they were supplying the device's cellular connectivity in Canada.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest... [more]
Rob Lewis
Rob is the President of Techvibes Media Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of Techvibes.com.
His diverse background includes stints in International Trade Finance, Web Development, and Enterprise Software and he is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Simon Fraser University.
When not blogging on...[more]
