(1) we have excellent broadband penetration

(2) we have an excellent (yes, this is lemonade from lemons) opportunity to do digital jujitsu on wireless providers: invent mesh infrastructures, experiment with alternate delivery ideas for messaging, and so forth. There’s lots of reasons to believe that the modern CRTC would open open whitespace as happened in the states and we’ve got lots of hardware and engineering talent in this country (and a government that prefers to subsidize that to software).

(3) we have RIM, though as Crow has pointed out, has been disappointing as a firestarter for innovation.

Now it’s much more likely that we’ll just line up at the Apple store to get our iPhone and grumble about it, or say we’re going to boycott Rogers one month and be getting our 3 year package the next, but at least the opportunity is there if someone wanted to seize it.