Kindle Goes International, But Not Coming To Canada

In the season when the consumer electronics industry is full of announcements practically every day, one announcement comes as a surprise to many tech industry watcher, it comes from Internet ecommerce pioneer Amazon.com. Their much hyped Kindle e-book reader which until has been only available stateside will be shipping to over 100 countries. The International version of the Kindle will support GSM cellular networks for wireless book buying, instead of the CDMA based version that has been selling so far in the United States.

That is great for everybody outside of the United States who have been waiting for the Kindle, not so great in two English speaking countries that will not be getting the Kindle, New Zealand and of course Canada. Why Amazon choose not to make the international Kindle available in the Great White North remains a mystery, it could be that there are Luddites in charge Canada's publishing industry? Possible but not likely, While services like Audible don't have Canadian web sites, Works by Canadian authors are on the American based web sites. Could it be the cellular industry? Possible, very possible the international version of the Kindle would have to use the Rogers Wireless network, Rogers may find it objectionable to have to sell access to their cellular network at wholesale rates to Amazon.

Leaving Canada out of such a world wide launch is simply unacceptable, so Amazon, publishing industry, and Rogers, you have some 'splaining to do.