According to Rogers Canada president, Nadir Mohammed, Rogers Wireless’s network virtually came to a grinding halt the day of the Apple iPhone announcement back in April reports Electronista.

Although the mobile business helped drive Rogers year-over-year quarterly revenue increase of 11 percent to $2.8 billion without the iPhone on sale, the company executive states that demand for other devices “slammed on the brakes” the same day as Rogers announced it would launch the Apple iPhone.

Apparently, demand for mobile devices remained calm up until the launch of the Apple iPhone, resulting in Nokia and Rogers both halving the price of the N95 8GB handset to $200.00 only a week before the iPhone launch in an attempt to stimulate sales.

The Rogers exec also says Rogers was taken by complete surprise with the opportunity to launch the iPhone, and said: “We didn’t anticipate that we would launch that device under any model this year.”

Apparently, Rogers has committed to purchasing $150 million worth of Apple iPhones, and will purchase more if necessary.