Big news today in Canada’s wireless industry. Telus and Bell announced they are partnering to upgrade their wireless network to 3G nationwide, laying the groundwork for an eventual move to 4G. The move should put both companies on equal footing with Rogers, but playing catchup is expensive:
Although both companies declined to provide any clear insights to the cost of the upgrade, analysts expect it to be approximately between $750-million to $1-billion, split two ways between Bell and Telus. Mr. Entwistle said that initial capital expenditures for the new network are included in Telus’ original guidance of approximately $1.9-billion this year and is expected to be $750-million higher than historical levels in the following year.
I’m not sure how I missed it, but apparently rumors of this specific deal actually surfaced back in July. The first rumor, that Telus would switch to GSM, started back in January. The announcement today covers the launch of a network with High Speed Packet Access (HSPA/GSM). Bell and Telus hope to have the network ready just in time for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. After that the goal is to move to LTE (4G), which is in line with the plans of most other carriers around the world.
Clearly this is great news for Canadians. Having a single network standard will bring cost benefits, and faster time-to-market for hardware. I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s the Telus press release, and here’s the Bell press release. Both are incredibly similar, though neither one mentions the other! I guess we should use the term “partnership” lightly.
MasterMaq's Blog 
I would theorise that one of the biggest benefits will be how much capital will be saved. This is really the beginning of a trend and transition that is occuring in the mobile industry elsewhere.
In the UK they have been working towards this for the last two years for example T-Mobile and 3 now share transparently their tower infrastructure openly with each others customers meaning better signals and more capacity without any additional costs.
As mobile networks migrate to commodity status in Europe there has been a big effort made by competitors to compete on services which are cheap and high value, not towers where the benefits are limited and expensive.
Just some additional food for thought š
Cost benefits to the providers, which in Canada translates to more profit for them, not lower prices for the customer, plus they will no doubt try to introduce all kinds of high priced bundled content packages rather than being a pure wireless ISP.
Interesting thoughts Roger – I agree capital savings will increase.
Colin, that’s pretty pessimistic, but probably true. Sadly.
personally I use services bell mobility its
distribyutor of cellcom and I buy new goods in cellcom phon shop