Holy crap, now this is a shocker. I knew that Telus and Bell had made their own HSPA+ network for the iPhone 3GS, but I had no idea that it didn’t support any kind of EDGE signal. Heck, not even GPRS. This means that the moment walk into an area without 3G coverage (or turn the 3G radio off for battery conservation), you are going dark as far as the “Bellus” network is concerned. At that point it’s wi-fi or nothing — and official App Store users don’t even have Google Voice to cover them anymore .

I actually think this could be a dealbreaker for me, despite how much I hate being stuck on Rogers. iPhoneinCanada is saying that the Bell/Telus network is actually faster on 3G than Rogers’ (and there’s even a law suit about this, to boot), but I really couldn’t give less of a crap about speed if I had to deal with my iPhone’s signal actually dying without 3G.

This isn’t a rant about coverage, though. I don’t have any hard evidence about how well the two networks stack up and it might still be too early to tell. My focus is on the lack of 2G support. I’ve actually made it a habit to turn off 3G when I’m out for long periods to save battery, and I rely on EDGE to keep me up to date on e-mails in these cases. Having no alternate signal to fall back on when I toggle that 3G switch off just isn’t an option for me – not until iPhones come with 4000mAh batteries inside their soft candy shells, anyway.

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