btw...any beloved info on ubuntu edge?

They already confirmed yonks ago that they've canned that approach...
Mark never stumped up some of his own $ before the end, & he most likely never intended to.
It would've been chump change for him, but substantially more probably would've been needed, & (potentially) ultimately wasted.

It was a marketing stunt (i.e. vaporware), nothing more.

"Jolla will be initially available in the EU, Norway and Switzerland.
It is yet to be determined what availability will be like in other countries."

I am disappointed :-(

I worry more not about availability (which means official shipping), but about networks support. There can be 3rd party retailers (Newegg, Amazon and etc.) if Jolla will simply open up purchasing for them. But if modem won't work with your network, then it will be pointless.

I hope they've been working hard with telcos & wholesalers/retailers worldwide to garner interest, & well in advance of making it available for purchase.
I hope at least one of Australia's telcos are amongst the 1st telcos who give them the green light (& relevant gov't regulatory bodies ofc).
Ideally Telstra, but it's unlikely to be them IMO, they very strongly dominate much of the Australian mobile market, & it's unlikely they'd be interested in Jolla.
They have the best 3G/4G coverage by far, but they're also way too pricey, you can get away with that when you have a near monopoly.
Even if they can get through all regulatory hoops, I'm worried none of Australia's telcos or retailers will care, I hope Australia is one of the 1st countries Jolla focuses on.

One thing I hadn't considered, if a phone's not officially approved for use on a network, it's possible for it to be blocked, right?
I'd assumed that as long as it supports the relevant standards/frequencies it should be fine, but maybe my telco (Telstra) will block it if it's not "approved"?
I guess it depends on the telco, I don't think I've ever bought a phone that wasn't "officially supported" by my carrier...
If it takes forever to come to Australia, I had planned to import from overseas, but I hadn't considered any roadblocks like that.

What are you saying ?

Jolla is not compatible?

I've never heard of that. N9 was not even officially sold in my country and no carrier "approved" it and i've been using it happily with 2 different carriers over the last 1.5 years...

Such thing like "approved for a carrier network" does not exist... at least not in my country.

Some carriers "whitelist" phones that can be used on their network but that is very rare. If a device doesn't meet the requirements to work in a certain country then it could be "blacklisted" or perhaps confiscated at Customes as some models of iPad where when they didn't meet Israeli wireless specifications. Generally GSM devices work almost anywhere the GSM standard is in place and though there might be nuances for some regions someone as small as Jolla needs to only worry about where there devices are being actively sold and make sure they meet certification there. Most devices sold in EU also get FCC certification even if they are not sold in the USA.

Well, an operator could do such a thing if it so chooses, it is technically possible to block a range of devices since even as RAN cannot exactly know the make/model of a specific UE, the UE type can be pretty reliably guessed by looking at the ue_capability_info of the device.

However; I have never come across an operator that implements such an feature