The nifty little gadget is certainly making some waves south of the border and having watched most of Apple’s tour of the phone’s features and user interface, I can see why. Not only is it a fantastic communications device, particularly for those whose email, IM, and telephone lives have converged, but its approach to web surfing while on-the-go looks fantastic compared to my experiences with Blackberry and PocketPC devices. However, all the promise won’t be realized unless (a) the carrier’s network can support all of the iPhone’s features; and (b) the user is willing to pay for a voice and data plan — the latter tend to be pricey here in the True White North.

Regarding those data plans, AT&T, which has exclusive rights on the iPhone in the U.S., initially forced iPhone users into voice and data plans, but they now appear to be relenting and allowing voice-only plans as some subscribers have canceled their contracts in protest.

On the matter of cancellations, AT&T has reportedly been charging a steep $175 termination fee, which is apparently very high when compared to other phone plans. In fact, at least one U.S. politician has been vocal about these fees. For their part, AT&T and Apple point out that unlike most cell phones, a disconnected iPhone is not just a small hunk of useless plastic, but a cross between the storage capacity of an iPod Nano (8GB or 4GB) and a full-fledged video iPod by virtue of its screen and video capability.

If you’re curious about Canadian availability, I’ve seen rumours indicating that by virtue of its network technology, Rogers will be the only Canadian carrier and that the iPhone will appear in late 2007 or early 2008. If its the former, I’m sure it will be high on many Christmas lists, including that of a certain pedwar whose Telus contract will be coming to an end in December 2007.

Looking farther down the line, it seems there may be even more iPod-iPhone convergence.

Getting the little black box to hook on to the wirless LAN was also stupidly easy. At power-up, it guides the user through a number of choices that require that you know some basic things about your home LAN, such as whether you’re using DHCP or static IP addressing. If you’re sufficiently in the know to be buying one of these things, then you should know that at a minimum. You should also know whether you’re using encryption and the encryption key (both 64-bit and 128-bit WEP are supported). In my case it was DHCP with 128-bit WEP so I fed it the code, added the Squeezebox’s MAC address to my WAP’s “allowed list” and it connected quickly and easily. Installing the SlimServer software on my Fedora 7 box was also similarly easy. Download the rpm, rpm -ivh, address any dependencies with yum, and you’re good to go. Time invested? About 15 minutes.

The device’s interface is intuitive and highly configurable so I’ll probably be playing with it for weeks before I settle on the best set-up, but for now, its made our entire music library accessible from the bedroom, independent of what is playing on the Rotel system in the basement. For the price, you can’t beat it.

If only I could afford the Transporter for the Rotel/B&W system…