Digital Deprivation: A Sampling of Offerings Not Available in Canada

Canadians love their gadgets. It’s a relatively rich country, abundant with resources and well-educated people, which gives many of its citizens the luxury and opportunity to use the latest and greatest toys.

Yet the lineup of notable consumer technology and service offerings that aren’t available in Canada never ceases to amaze me.

A Canadian need not surf many U.S.-based Web sites, to understand what he or she can’t buy or watch via conventional channels.

Here’s an off-the-top of my head list of the top missing gadgetry and services at this moment in Canada (in no particular order I might add.) The list could undoubtedly be rounded out with a little help from a few readers. Here it goes anyway:

1) Amazon’s Kindle. The fast-growing electronic book reader (and buying mechanism) is a U.S. only phenomenon unfortunately. I’d expect to see the Kindle 2 released in Canada at some point over the next 12 to 18 months. In the meantime, Amazon has said it needs to strike electronic publishing and distribution rights as well as network agreements with the likes of Rogers, Bell and Telus so readers can download books to their Kindles in the Great White North. For now, Canadians will have to stick buy books of the old fashioned paper variety from Amazon or other book stores.

2) Unlimited wireless long distance – As Canadians are all too aware, a phone call from the 416 area code to say Oshawa, a suburb of Toronto a mere 55 kilometres away, costs 35 cents a minute (sans LD plan). Ouch. Not quite like the unlimited wireless LD plans found in the United States, which give users the ability to call virtually anywhere in the country for a flat rate. Oh how many a Canadian would like a bigger wireless LD bucket of minutes to draw upon. The market will solve this problem over the course of time but for now Canadians can choose a My5 plan from Rogers or another large service provider or of course simply watch their wireless LD usage carefully.

3) Tivo. Founded in 1997, Tivo has become popular with Americans that want to shake up the conventional TV viewing experience. In Canada, the box costs $199 roughly and the monthly service will cost you $12.95 a month. That’s an expensive proposition for someone that’s already forking over a monthly stipend to Rogers, Cogeco, or another TV service provider. The TiVo box also doesn’t record in high-definition either, another major difference between the Canadian and U.S. versions of the service, which further detracts from the TiVo value proposition in Canada. This makes the service one for the all but the most ardent of gadget geeks (and those with lots of disposable income).

4) Hulu. Canadians are “allowed” to watch Saturday Night Live digital shorts on Canwest’s Global station, which could enter bankruptcy protection in the coming weeks or months. Just don’t expect to watch the same short again on NBC’s Hulu because there isn’t an ad for the Keg or some other Canadian construct. In other words, the regulator won’t let Hulu stream its service into Canada, presumably because it hasn’t struck a deal with the likes of CTV and/or Global to feature Canadian ads. 

Anyway, Canadians don’t live in a digital ghetto as one columnist/blogger suggested last year(thanks for the graphic Jesse) – quite the opposite. There’s usually a good reason for the notable absence of high-visibility products and services in Canada, namely economies of scale.

Canada’s a small country which makes the profit potential lower and the business case weaker for companies that may want to sell their wares north of the 49th parallel at least for the short term.

Regulation, as noted, can be an issue too. Deals must also be struck with local providers or affiliated companies as Amazon and others have likely discovered.

This may all be well and good for some but for others it slows down the pace of technology adoption and arguably productivity, if not plain ol’ fun.

Those are my top of mind thoughts on the matter. Are there other technologies missing from the Canadian landscape you’d like to see available?