Wirelessnorth.ca

Sorry we’re a few days late on the news, but here you are, some more good news on a new wireless entrant in Canada. Taking our catchprase “great wireless north” very seriously is RuralCom:

The proposed Alaska Highway Network will provide nearly contiguous coverage along 1,685 km. (1,047 mi.) of the Alaska Highway from Wonowon, BC to Beaver Creek, YT on the Alaska-Yukon Territory border. Communities to be served will include Fort Nelson, BC, Watson Lake, YT and Whitehorse, YT.

RuralCom’s proposed network along the BC North Coast will provide nearly contiguous coverage along the BC Inside Passage waterway from just north ofVancouver Island to the Alaska-BC border. BC communities served will include Bella Bella, Masset, Queen Charlotte City and Prince Rupert . The area served will also provide service to the 1.8 million cruise ship passengers traveling to and from Alaska during the May-October season.

From a policy perspective, you could count this one as a win for feds, as far as using the auction to encourage some mobile services in some hensewise underserved places. On the flip side though, the PR so far seems to suggest (now becoming a familiar refrain) an emphasis on talk and text service.

So your life-long dream and drop everything, buy a young malamute and hit the road streaming mobile broadband from the sidecar of your motor-bike the whole way up the yukon trail, may have to wait a little longer.

From a business perspective the model seems like a clever way for Ruralcom to also scoop some lucrative roaming revenues from tourists and Americans to and from Alaska as so forth. We do have a few questions though, drop us a note if you have more info: Does Ruralcom have any spectrum outside of AWS, or will only new AWS handsets get coverage? It must be a neat trick to provision basestation power and backhaul that far up the Yukon’s wazoo, there must be some interesting/clever stories there?

Protip: North of sixty, remote alternatives like solar power have some serious drawbacks some parts of the year…

Link: RuralCom Corporation to provide cell phone service to the Alaska Highway and the BC North Coast