It hasn't been disclosed officially yet but Amp'd Mobile is moving into Canada through an MVNO deal with Telus Corp. Amp'd, which has enjoyed limited success in the U.S., is trying to carve out a niche with wireless users by offering cool phones and a focus on entertainment services such as video, music and multi-player games. It is difficult to tell how well Amp'd, which recently opened an office in downtown Toronto, will do in Canada but it has to be buoyed by Richard Branson's admission last week that Virgin Canada has 250,000 subscribers - far more than many people thought. Perhaps the pre-paid, no contract model is resonating with Canadian consumers looking to affiliate themselves with brand with edge (Rogers, Telus and Bell don't have much edge no matter how much they try). Another positive for Virgin and Amp'd (and any other potential MVNO players) is wireless penetration in Canada is still only 50% (see industry statistics here). This means there are still more than five million potential wireless users to come into the fold before the market shows any signs of being saturated. By the way, Virgin expects to have 400,000 customers by year-end and one million within the next two years. Tags: wireless

Just a housekeeping note about Maple Leaf 2.0. It has moved to the b5media network to the "live" URL is www.mapleleaftwo.com. The RSS feed remains the same but canadawebtwo.com no longer works. Why the change to b5? Well, they asked and it sounded like an interesting proposition to be part of a blog network. Hopefully, they can give Maple Leaf 2.0 and Web 2.0 activity in Canada some more profile.