Two years ago this month I wrote a piece about Bell & Telus’ shiny new shared HSPA+ network (here October 7, 2009); let’s take a reality check to see how much has changed since then.
In that piece I explained that Bell and Telus had separate CDMA networks which they would be abandoning in favour of a new HSPA+ network, which has happened very smoothly. At the time Rogers had covered about 84% of the Canadian population with HPSA (3.6 and 7.2mbps) and had just opened their first city with some HSPA+ support (Ottawa, if I recall correctly) and over the next six months upgraded many other cities that had existing 3G service to HSPA+ (in May 2010). Rogers has also since expanded their 3G coverage to include the province of Manitoba (through a partnership with TBayTel) and some other areas on Ontario, thus leaving the Maritimes with unchanged 3G service areas (though they promise this will change “soon”). Neither Bell, Telus, or their subsidiary brands have offered Rogers customers a means out of their existing contracts. Rogers has also launched LTE 4G in 4 cities in 2011: Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Rogers data packages are typically 500MB or 1GB for the two most common smartphone packages; LTE starts at $52.93/10 GB.
Bell and Telus have also had a busy few years; let’s start with Bell. For years Bell had a 50% share in Virgin Mobile Canada, a MVNO that used Bell towers and cellular equipment on the “no-frills” wireless service plans offered by Virgin. In 2009 BCE Inc. bought out the remaining shares of Virgin Mobile Canada to make it a full subsidiary company and began to offer HSPA/HSPA+ phones in late 2009. Today, Virgin has very competitive phones and plans, and is a serious wireless provider that offers “tab” service rather than traditional termed contracts (whereby 10% of your bill each month pays off the balance remaining on the purchase cost of your phone). Bell still maintains Solo Mobile in central/western Canada, though they’ve fallen by the wayside in light of the Virgin brand. Bell continues to activate, sell, and service CDMA phones and has no current plans to discontinue service for these phones in the near future, though they do no longer service analog phones. The average package with Bell and Virgin is 1GB with the typical smartphone package ($60 and $65/mo respectively).
Telus has also been busy: Koodo, a “no-frills” affordable service provider they created in 2008 to attract younger, cost-conscious consumers has taken off; as of today they offer a vast selection of smartphones with data plans starting at $5 (a flexi-plan that increases with usage) as well as a 2GB/$30 plan which far-and-beyond beats typical dataplans with Bell, Telus, Rogers, and Virgin. Telus now offers a nearly HSPA-only line of phones, with a selection of HSPA+ handsets. I had imagined that there would be more of these phones by now, however they’ve only really come out in great numbers in the past year after AT&T announced their use of HSPA+. Typical data packages remain greatly unchanged for Telus, with approximately 1GB being the average allotment for most consumers (as is bundled with their $65/mo smartphone package).
The strange development in Canada in the past two years has been new entrants with HSPA+ on the AWS (T-Mobile) bands, notably Wind Mobile and Public Mobile. Wind greatly focuses on unlimited services, such as unlimited data, messaginng, and calling within Wind-zones (where Wind has towers; the phones will still function outside of these, though will be roaming with increased airtime rates). Rogers has launches a competing brand, Chatr, aimed at this “unlimited in zones” mentality which is a scam: Wind has to do “zones” because they only have towers in those areas yet still wish to offer nationwide service. Rogers has nationwide service (to some degree) and arbitrarily enforces “zones” on Chatr customers. Wind has now accumulated more than 317,000 subscribers (here) and is still going strong.
In the near-to-mid-term future we have the Maritimes’ largest cable provider, Eastlink, launching some sort of cellular network. Currently Eastlink offers a Motorola Canopy network for rural broadband across Nova Scotia and is partnered with Rogers Wireless to offer discounts for bundle customers. Eastlink has cable/internet/home phone service in nine provinces, though is most predominant in Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Newfoundland). Given that Bell or Telus are the only real options for cellular service in the Maritimes, there are high hopes for Eastlinks forthcoming service. Notably, in 2005 Eastlink began offering home phone service and made the 902 area code (for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island) the most competitive in North America. Hopefully the 902 area code will once again be the most competitive in 2012 with cellular service.