Wirelessnorth.ca

Novatel has announced that it will be offering express card and tasty USB flavours. Combine this with some of Roger’s surprisingly reasonable pc-card data plans and you have a pretty good mobile broadband solution. And by finally we mean “sometime this summer”. In the meantime, I recently snagged an HSPA card (for research purposes you know). Look for soon on WirelessNorth.ca a review of the performance of Roger’s HSPA data network including such crazy scenarios that your Rogers/Bell portable internet or TorontoHydro OneZone had such trouble with like “in a house” or “in an office tower”.

Note Bell and telus also offer USB-based EVDO network adapters, not quite as fast but which you can pick up today. Of everyone, Telus has most generous pc-card data plans which it probably doesn’t get enough credit for. If Telus or Bell wants to send WirelessNorth.ca one of their devices, we’ll gladly test those out too.

At least when it comes laptop-only devices, Canadian carriers are getting closer be being globally competitive in wireless broadband. Before you think we’ve suddenly gone entirely soft on Canada’s telcogarchs: Take note that, while we’re getting in the ballpark of affordability pricing-wise (typically $65 for 1GB + system access fee + GST +PST), the Canadian carriers are still at least twice to three times as expensive as comparable services in other countries.

Once the price comes down one more factor and carriers start to give away the dongles, expect demand for these things to explode in Canada. (new entrants, are we giving you any ideas?)