We had an inkling that the Palm Pre was not doing well on Bell in Canada after third party reseller dropped the smartphone down to $0.00. But at that time, Bell was still charging $100 for the Pre. But there’s nothing like a vote of no confidence like dropping a flagship smartphone to free on contract just five months after it hit your network. Of course, it’ll still take a three-year contract to get it for free. If you’re not interested in shacking up with Bell for three full years, you can still get a Pre for $99.95 on a two year contract, $199.95 for a one year contract, and just $349.95 with no contract at all.

So what’s going on here? For one, it seems clear they’re having trouble selling the Pre. But two is the hope/fear that the Pre (or Pre Plus) may very well be available on another network – like Telus – in the very near future. If you’ll think back to late August when the Pre finally launched in Canada, Bell admitted that they had a six-month exclusive on the Pre, and that soon will expire. Do they have excess inventory to clear, or is this just a ploy to secure more smartphone subscriber customers before webOS becomes available on other Canadian carriers? Hard to say.

[via: Mobile Syrup]

Thanks to Bryan for the tip!

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Okay, so maybe Bell wasn’t the right choice for launching the Pre in Canada… Today MobileSyrup noted that Canadian wireless reseller Wireless Wave had discounted the Palm Pre to $0 with a new Bell contract. It appears that the continually discounted price of the Pre in Canada has done little to drive sales, but given that Bell (and Telus) both just picked up the iPhone, we can guess where their marketing dollars have been going as of late.

While it is clear that Palm and Sprint are still special friends here in the US of A, somehow we doubt that Bell has maintained special Canadian friend status. Makes one wonder how many of those 210,000 unsold units from the last quarter are sitting on shelves in Canada.

Well, here’s hoping that Telus can do a better job with the Pre and Pixi.

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Remember that Palm P100UNA that was certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance back in August? Yeah, that’s a GSM Palm Pre made for the United States. To break it down, P100 is the Pre (as seen by the P100 on Sprint), U is for UMTS (3G GSM), and NA for North America. While we haven’t heard anything on this front for over two months, the FCC database trawlers at wireless goodness noted that today a new Palm device passed the fed’s certification process: the P100UNA.

There’s not much too be gleaned from the FCC documents on the P100UNA that we couldn’t figure out from the name: it’s a Pre that will be compatible with US 3G GSM bands, e.g. AT&T and T-Mobile (and our friends up in Canada on Rogers, Telus, and Bell). When will the GSM Pre finally make its way to Palm’s home shores? We don’t know for sure, but if we had to guess we’d say sometime after Sprint’s US exclusive on the Pre expires at the end of 2009. Let’s just hope that an unlocked version is in the mix.

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We’ve heard this before, but the folks at MobileSyrup have reconfirmed what we’ve heard from before: the Pre and Pixi are coming to Telus in January 2010. Although Telus (like Bell, now) runs both CDMA and GSM networks, we’re devoutly hopeful that Telus will opt for the GSM variety of the Pre and, well, the Pixi too. With both Verizon and Telus coming on board in January, it’ll be like Palm’s second North American coming-out party.

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Bell used to have some pretty sweet plans for you Canadian Pre owners, as in unlimited data. But with the launch of their new GSM network and the arrival of the iPhone, Bell has stopped offering unlimited data plans, like rival carriers Rogers and Telus. The new plans range from $45 for 500 MB of data a month (seriously) plus a few options of minutes vs. texts up to $100 a month for 2 GB (again with options for minutes and text). The available plans are more expensive than the options from Rogers and Telus, who both offer plans around $100 with 3 GB of data; users on Rogers can opt to pay $20 more for a total of 5 GB of data.

Existing Bell subscribers should be able to continue using their current plans until their contracts expire. What happens then we don’t anticipate being pretty.

Thanks to human-cannonball for the heads up!

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In recent weeks our tip box has been practically overflowing with hints of when the Palm Pre would launch on Bell Mobility in Canada. Unfortunately, just about every tip we’ve received was a different date, and those contradictions make it hard to run (for the record, the same thing happened for six months with Sprint as well). Thankfully, it looks like my northern friends can now rest, as MobileSyrup has discovered that the folks over at Future Shop have announced that the Bell Pre will be available on Thursday, August 27. Future Shop is currently accepting in-store pre-orders, so if anybody feels like dropping by their local Canadian electronics mega-store, let us know what you find!

Update: Hugues points us to Bell’s own site, which also now lists the August 27th date. You can also pre-order directly from Bell.

Update 2: and Palm chimes in with the same on their official blog, clearing up pricing details: $199.95 Canadian with a three year contract, minimum 500mb data plan.  Ouch?

So, our Canadian friends, now that the day is near (just over three weeks), do you find yourself wanting the Pre on Bell, or would you rather wait for it on Telus or Rogers?

Thanks to John for the tip!

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Palm has confirmed via a press release and a blog posting that Canada’s Bell Network will get the Palm Pre in the "2nd half of 2009."  Yes, our neighbors to the north are going to have to wait a bit (Sorry, Jason!).  Hopefully the windows to Bell’s launch will narrow down significantly — our experience with the Sprint "first half of 2009" has been pretty rough.

They’ve also confirmed that Bell will get the Pre exclusively, sorry Telus customers. 

"Bell is excited to be only the second carrier in the world to announce the 3G Pre," said Adel Bazerghi, senior vice president of Products for Bell Mobility. "With the unique user experience of the world’s first webOS phone, running on the country’s largest 3G network, we’re confident that Canadians will embrace Pre as the phone for their lives today."

Hey Bazerghi, we think you meant "as the phone for their lives sometime later this year."  We’re just saying.  As with the release date, the exact price is also unknown.

PreCentral.net first reported that Bell would be getting the Pre way back in January thanks to anonymous tipsters. 

Update from Derek: Bell Canada has a page up about the Pre where you can sign up to get notified.  There doesn’t appear to be any new information there, but it’s a link, hey?

Update on the Update from Dieter: Hey everybody, if you haven’t said hello to our new writer Derek Kessler (nee Captain Hair), you should!

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