Telus and Bell announce GSM plans for Canada - HSPA 3G networks by 2010
By Will Park on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 4:37 PM PST In Announcements, Bell Mobility, LTE, Partnerships, Technologies, Telus
With the CDMA evolution pathway coming to a veritable dead-stop in the next few years, it’s been safe to assume that CDMA carriers in North America would be jumping on board the 4G LTE bandwagon in the next decade. There’s been much speculation about Telus (NYSE: TU) and Bell Canada adopting the GSM evolution pathway for their next generation networks over the past months, and today it all comes to a head.
Following on an interview from a Telus exec that had the Canadian carrier considering LTE as the standard of choice for their future data network, both Telus and Bell have announced that they’ll be launching GSM service in 2010. Both carriers will be rolling out 3G HSPA networks on a fresh GSM backbone in 2010, as both Telus and Bell prepare to eventually offer 4G LTE service.
Rather than rely on their CDMA network to handle the brunt of wireless demand until LTE comes online, Bell and Telus will be offering subscribers a GSM-option (3G HSPA) alongside CDMA. By layering their HSPA network over their CDMA network, the Canadian carriers hope to make the transition to GSM technology as smooth and painless as possible for their customers.
“Bell’s transition to the global 4G LTE standard with a combined EV-DO and HSPA network path aligns us with more than 30 major carriers worldwide planning a similar move to LTE,” said Stephen Howe, CTO for Bell. “This broad global technology ecosystem will mean a fast, efficient and cost-effective network transition to 4G LTE, and access to the broadest possible range of next-generation phones and data services.”
The adoption of HSPA will expand the roaming agreement that both Bell and Telus have had in place since 2001. With Rogers (NYSE: RCI)’ essentially monopolizing the Canadian GSM market, Bell and Telus are working to help eachother grow into their GSM-britches. In the next couple years, we’re likely to see the Canadian market undergo a significant shakeup. More GSM competition means Canadian consumers will see the cost of wireless voice and data service drop as carriers battle for market-share.
Your next mobile phone might just be a GSM handset on Bell or Telus. Cue the champagne!
[Via: RCRNews]
This is music to my ears!
Finally! Rogers iver price there plans and i have been staying with them becuase of GSM phones. If they turn GSM there would be BUG prices drops plus ontop of that telus and bell with have real good introductory rates for the begining of there GSM network phones.
About bloodying frickin’ time! Tired of paying ridiculous rates for cell phone coverage.
So as a guess I would say currently Canada has it rough with cell rates atm? Man, that sux.
You got it Radium
-It’s not too bad if you just ignore the benefits of data… (won’t have to do that much longer after Bell $ Telus come into the picture)
BTW
Does anyone know if Bell and Telus are the same company?
They seem to make all the same moves
@Zak: As far as I know, Bell and Telus are two seperate companies, unlike Fido and Rogers. If you recall, Telus released the HTC Touch Diamond and Bell didn’t. Also Telus won over Bell in getting the BlackBerry Storm.
That being said, this piece of news here is certainly as you said ‘music to my ears’
It’s about time we see some dropped prices on data plans.
all im saying is Ro”b”ers is going down big time!!! haha oh man i hate rogers!!
Even if the phones plans prices remain the same, I hope that bell/telus data plans are reasonable (data charges= dollar fifty per Gigabyte+ data plan fee 20,30$? month)
’cause I think phones are going data…. and rogers data data planes are extreme rip-offs.
also hope that they will sell unlocked phones, so that the phone plans don’t have the built in rental fee. (which means if you already have a phone, you are already paying to much) and everybody is paying the system access fee….