I’ve heard from more than one place — including at work, oddly enough — that the Jesus Phone iPhone is coming to Canada via Rogers (one of our few wireless carriers) before Christmas.

Mat Ingram points out that the price might be around $CAD 499 for an 8 gigabyte phone for a 3 year plan.

Personally, I don’t think its coming before Christmas, if only that I would have expected there to be some kind of huge marketing run up well *before* Christmas for the iPhone. God knows that you can see enough of them in Canada already by the Canadian faithful who have purchased them across the border (or, who have gotten them through other enterprising Canadians).

There are two other issues, of course, which makes its debut here — versus the US — even more interesting.

Price: Given the recent surge of the Canadian dollar (above par compared to the USD on most days now) — or the fall of the US dollar — there’s a tremendous amount of consumer pressure these days to have comparable products priced similarly here as in the United States. Am I the only one curious to see how Rogers will actually price the iPhone? I’m sure there are daily debates going on at the highest level about the pressure to absolutely ream its customers on the price vs. the public outcry against the artificially high price bump, as we’re on par with the USD now. $499 for an 8 gig model would probably be right, but its still $100 more than the same piece of technology across the border.

Data plan: I’ve written about this before, but its worth mentioning — Canadians pay more per megabyte than almost any one else in the world as it applies to wireless data plans. Let’s compare the plans for the iPhone with AT&T and, for example, a comparable plan with the BlackBerry for Rogers.

The entry plan with AT&T starts at $59.99 and you get “unlimited data and text” with 450 minutes of voice. My eyes almost fell out their head when I read that the first time.

Rogers? For $60, you get 25 megabytes of data and *nothing* else (i.e. no voice). Oh, you do get the benefit of paying an extra $7 per MB for every megabyte you go over.

So am I waiting for the iPhone in Canada? Of course I am. But only because I’ll be interested to hear the consumer debate over the whole issue as, if history is any indication, Rogers will want to milk us for all its worth — and with the Canadian dollar being on par as it is, everyone will be able to quantify exactly *how* large a new one its ripping us.