# iPhone on Telus or Bell in a year?



## KMPhotos (Jun 17, 2008)

So this was an interesting read.
BELL, TELUS IN 3G PACT
It talks about Telus and Bell upgrading to GSM very soon.
Just something to think about. I'm amazed that it could happen so fast.
This could be great news for iPhone plans an prices for cell phone plans in general.

Here is the article from the Financial Post if you don't want to click on the link...

BELL, TELUS IN 3G PACT
Wireless upgrade would allow them to challenge Rogers: sources

BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. are set to announce an upgrade to a next-generation wireless network next week that will allow the companies to provide the same popular mobile devices, such as the iPhone 3G, that industry leader Rogers Communications Inc. offers, sources have told the Financial Post.

Multiple sources in the telecom industry said Bell Canada and Telus are expected to share the costs of upgrading from their current code division multiple access (CDMA) networks to the globally adopted high speed packet access (HSPA) network. It is estimated to cost the two companies as much as $1-billion and take about one year to install.

The announcement will put pressure on Rogers and not just because its two entrenched competitors will be able to offer a similar high-speed network. As well, new wireless companies may now choose to negotiate with Bell or Telus for roaming agreements, giving the two incumbent telcos a revenue boost.

The new network will allow the companies to support such popular mobile devices as Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3G and Research In Motion Ltd.'s Black-Berry Bold, which are already offered by Rogers but so far unavailable to Bell and Telus customers due to incompatible networks.

Nokia Siemens Networks, one of the largest telecommunication-equipment makers in the world, is said to be the vendor that will provide Bell Canada and Telus with the HSPA network upgrade.

Sources said Bell and Telus won't offer so-called "2G" GSM devices to avoid their customers paying roaming charges that would eventually go to Rogers, the only wireless provider in Canada with a GSM network.

Genuity Capital Markets equity analyst Dvai Ghose said avoiding a GSM network build-out will help the companies save capital expenditure costs while being able to tap into the "plethora" of new HSPA devices that will become available to cellphone users in the next year.

"It may not be an immediate reason to do it for the cost savings, but there's a more immediate reason to do it for the iconic devices," Mr. Ghose said.

Representatives from Bell Canada and Telus declined to comment on the possibility of a unified network upgrade.

The timing of the network announcement may be no accident.

This Wednesday will be the due date that wireless companies will have to pay Industry Canada after the conclusion of Ottawa's spectrum auction in July.

After more than one month of bidding by 15 companies, several new potential cellphone companies emerged, among them Quebecor Inc., Shaw Communications Inc., Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises (DAVE) Wireless Inc. and Globalive Communications Corp., which appears positioned to become Canada's next national wireless carrier.

According to Industry Canada, to encourage competition in the $14-billion industry, any new entrant will be allowed to roam on an incumbent operator's network for five yefars while building out its own infrastructure.

Although the new entrants have not released details of their cellphone businesses, analysts say DAVE Wireless and Globalive have stated their wish to pursue a low-cost voice-centric model to appeal to the roughly one-third of Canadians who do not have cellphones.

"If you want any of the new entrants' roaming revenue, you pretty much have to be on HSPA," Mr. Ghose said. "This is important in the near to medium term [for Bell and Telus] to offset the loss of market share they will have."

However, telecom consultant Iain Grant of the Seaboard Group disagreed. He said wireless companies focusing on voice packages, not data, will not necessarily need an HSPA network to roam on.


----------



## slicecom (Jun 13, 2008)

Wow! I hope this is true. It would be good for everyone. Rogers would be forced to drop its prices to compete and new iPhone buyers would have choice as to what provider they want.


----------



## machael (Apr 27, 2008)

I wonder how long 5 yefars is?


----------



## Adrian. (Nov 28, 2007)

Maybe somebody could clarify. The article didn't say they were going towards GSM but sort of new gen compatible format that is faster. Anyone care to share?


----------



## uPhone (Jun 29, 2008)

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple just releases a CDMA iPhone in a year. It's the only way to achieve world domination in countries that have no GSM carriers.


----------



## RunTheWorldOnMac (Apr 23, 2006)

Most other countries already use 3G/GSM...I do not see Apple going CDMA. Other speculative support would be Bell / Telus' interest in going GSM. They would have more than likely spoken with Apple many times to ensure they were not going to go CDMA; Apple has no reason to lie to Bell / Telus, if they did do CDMA lying to them both they would not have a major CDMA carrier in Canada and that is not smart thinking.


----------



## miniphone (Jul 24, 2008)

RunTheWorldOnMac said:


> Most other countries already use 3G/GSM...I do not see Apple going CDMA. Other speculative support would be Bell / Telus' interest in going GSM. They would have more than likely spoken with Apple many times to ensure they were not going to go CDMA; Apple has no reason to lie to Bell / Telus, if they did do CDMA lying to them both they would not have a major CDMA carrier in Canada and that is not smart thinking.


Indeed, there is no chance that Apple will go CDMA. In fact I read that USA wanted to force Iraq to use CDMA after the innovation - Iraq didn't have cellular service prior to the invation - but failed; since all Iraq's neighbors in the region use GSM network.

Might sound a bit off topic, but what I am trying to say is GSM is globally accepted standard. 

I would love to see both Bell and Telus move to the GSM network, better market situation for the Canadian consumer.


----------



## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

RunTheWorldOnMac said:


> Most other countries already use 3G/GSM...I do not see Apple going CDMA. Other speculative support would be Bell / Telus' interest in going GSM. They would have more than likely spoken with Apple many times to ensure they were not going to go CDMA; Apple has no reason to lie to Bell / Telus, if they did do CDMA lying to them both they would not have a major CDMA carrier in Canada and that is not smart thinking.


Last I heard they have an exclusivity clause in their contract with AT&T that prevents them from developing CDMA technology for the iPhone until 2012. Likely the emerging technology they are referring to is simply whatever GSM based technology will follow 3G (4G according to wikipedia).


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

What I found more interesting than Bell/Telus going GSM is this statement:



> After more than one month of bidding by 15 companies, several new potential cellphone companies emerged, among them Quebecor Inc., Shaw Communications Inc., Data & Audio-Visual Enterprises (DAVE) Wireless Inc. and Globalive Communications Corp., which appears positioned to become Canada's next national wireless carrier.


Shouldn't more competition drive the prices down? 
These new companies could be operational a lot sooner than the Bell/Telus network upgrade, not only this, I understand from the article that they would be able to use the Rogers network in an interim 5-year perod if they wanted.
A bit like CRTC forcing Bell to make their local distribution available to the competition.


----------



## Flipstar (Nov 7, 2004)

Well, Bell and Telus have been talking about this for a while now. They both want to be ready for the Winter Olympics in 2010. If they're not carrying GSM, Rogers will likely be eating up a lot of the roaming charges when the Olympics come to town.


----------



## MacGYVER (Apr 15, 2005)

krs said:


> What I found more interesting than Bell/Telus going GSM is this statement:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yes and no to the prices going down with competition. Right now Rogers doesn't see a need to lower prices on the Data side of things as we Canadians barely use 500MB of data on our iPhones over 3G. That's why Rogers is rising prices on the data side. Where you could or might see competition is in the voice packages and system fees. Until Canadians show a true need for data usage over 3G or the next 4G network, don't expect prices to drop. No matter how many companies are out there. Why would Bell say for example lower data prices and give more value for data if the need is not met through its competition?

Free Wifi is awesome, but I wonder if it will hinder the advancement of our networks over 3G, 4G in Canada for the near future? Hopefully that 95% of users will increase their usage over the next 6 months. Where I see competition taking hold of pricing is on the voice side. If Bell and Telus move over to GSM, then we will see some awesome pricing wars on the voice side of things.


----------



## Malco (Apr 18, 2003)

No where in the article does it say Bell is building a GSM network.
In fact it says by NOT building a GSM network they will save capital.
They are adding HSPA.


----------



## Commodus (May 10, 2005)

To clarify:

HSPA is the 3G format that's often used on most GSM networks to speed up data and improve call quality. Those networks, however, are using GSM because of their legacy investments; they have older phones to support.

Bell and Telus would be coming from a clean slate and so can move directly to 3G as the only network choice rather than having to support something old. Think of it as if Apple in the past had the luxury of developing Mac OS X without any legacy app requirements.

Of course, some of this will be moot within a couple of years, when Bell, Rogers and everyone else moves to 4G.


----------



## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

Commodus said:


> To clarify:
> 
> HSPA is the 3G format that's often used on most GSM networks to speed up data and improve call quality. Those networks, however, are using GSM because of their legacy investments; they have older phones to support.
> 
> Bell and Telus would be coming from a clean slate and so can move directly to 3G as the only network choice rather than having to support something old.


So what happens to all of Bell's and Telus' CDMA customers?
Wouldn't Bell have to run 3G in parallel with their existing CDMA network?

HSPA as I understand it is just an enhancement to 3G not yet another incompatible technology.


----------



## candan9019 (Jul 22, 2008)

krs said:


> So what happens to all of Bell's and Telus' CDMA customers?
> Wouldn't Bell have to run 3G in parallel with their existing CDMA network?


They would for a few years, this has been done in other countries like Australia and would be similar to the transition from TDMA a few years back here.

One thing I'm curious about is what will they do about rural areas, unless they upgrade their entire coverage area to HSPA you'll be stuck roaming on Rogers or carry around a second CDMA phone.

I should also clarify that 3G can refer to HSPA and EVDO. So it's more appropriate to say HSPA because Bell/Telus already have 3G in the form of EVDO. It can get kind of confusing.


----------



## Malco (Apr 18, 2003)

Bell will be keeping CDMA for many years. Look how long they kept analogue. This is just a stop gap.
LTE (Long Term Evolution) should be rolled out in 2009/2010

LTE is where both GSM and CDMA merge so to speak.

3GPP Long Term Evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Co-existence with legacy standards (users can transparently start a call or transfer of data in an area using an LTE standard, and, should coverage be unavailable, continue the operation without any action on their part using GSM/GPRS or W-CDMA-based UMTS or even 3GPP2 networks such as CDMA or EV-DO)"


----------



## MikeyXX (Aug 2, 2008)

I was at a business conference that happened to have the topic drift to Cell and Rogers. It was stated that Rogers is not interested in price wars. Top management feel that people will pay extra for Rogers for the "quality". If this is true and they don't change their minds, then I wouldn't expect Rogers to drop their prices anytime soon once the competition starts.


----------



## mbaldwin (Jan 20, 2003)

This rollout would first result in a Fido-like network where the coverage is only in major metropolitan areas. Obviously, once you left the newly created 3G zones then you have zero signal. Unless you roam onto Rogers.  

Having no fallback options (2G GSM, EDGE) may make it hard to market the current iPhone. I'm not sure they can get decent coverage until well into 2010. At which point an entirely new iPhone will surely be out...


----------

