Wirelessnorth.ca

First up, big thanks to the MEIC for inviting WirelessNorth.ca to take part in their launch party at OCAD last week and share the stage with Anthony Lacavera of Globalive and Dominique Sebastien Forest of Quebecor.

First you have to remember that Quebecor is not just a very disruptive player in the Quebec cable and home phone market, they’re also a significant media company across Canada. They also bought a nice chunk of spectrum (only) in Quebec – much more spectrum than then you’d ever need to just sell talk and text to everyone in la belle province. Bear these facts in mind.

You can be sure Quebecer’s talk to people and consume a reasonable amount of content from around the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. But also be sure that Quebecers, especially the majority francophone Quebecois also are interested in talking to folks, publishing, sharing, and consuming content that originate entirely locally. Think about how much more nicely contained content distribution and network traffic would be in Quebec compared to any other jurisdiction in Canada. Now imagine the nifty economies of scope for a savvy quadruple-threat telco AND major content producer/distributor that really understands the Quebec market with a major presence across every type screen and handset. Bear that in mind too.

Dominique led off with a pretty cool presentation on the transformative effect of mobile technology as a rich media device. He talked about how users were now “at the center” and in control of their mobile and media experience. But he also seemed to be framing mobile as a boon to marketers and for ad-supported content. The theory being that unlike old crude models of marketing to demographics, mobile allows you to really understand and finely segment your audience by “clouds” of commonalities of where you’ve been, what you like, who you’re connected to etc. Pretty cool. Or maybe these prospects freak you out.

Quebecor has a reputation for being disruptive. However, if you were hoping for just big fat dumb pipe, it sure doesn’t sound like that.

Second you should remember that Globalive is Yak. A successful (1M subscribers) discount long distance player for consumers fed up with big telco long distance bill. Next remember that Globalive has spectrum spanning almost all of Canada, but to get that they spread themselves thin in terms of spectrum bandwidth.

Anthony spoke to the rough deals that Canadians have been subjected to. He explicit that globalive will be starting out at the opposite end of the spectrum from Quebecor. Cheap, no-strings, no-contract phone plans targeted at first-time cellular subscribers, existing yak long distance customers and disgruntled customers of the big 3.

Over questions we able to glean a little bit more about the plans of each carrier. Here’s what we know so far:

Quebecor’s launch date uncertain (later in 2009 we’d wager)
Technology uncertain but something GSM-based (HSDPA 7.2 most likely but who knows. 14.4 does exist)
Will be media-centric, will be going after high end and media/data services not just talk and text
But… remember smart phone device availability on AWS spectrum is still thin. (Android G1 being the only AWS smartphone we know of and that’s exclusive to Tmobile so far)
Primary market is going to be Quebec and existing videotron base
What, if any, services they will offer with their (thinner) spectrum licensees Ontario they won’t say

Globalive could be launching as early as this June (but we think it will take a little longer)
Technology will be GSM-based, HSPA
Launching first in a handful of major cities.
Think City-fido type plans
Think fido/solo/koodo killer plans
Think basic feature phones not smart phones
Anthony would like to offer data-only plans, and all kind of innovative stuff, but don’t expect it soon (maybe if they survive to bid in the next spectrum auction?)