Is 2010 the year to stop worrying and love the carriers?

January 26th, 2010Is 2010 the year to stop worrying and love the carriers?

Posted by Editor in Carriers, competition, wireless

The Canadian wireless industry has come a long way in just 3 years. From the world’s crap hand-me-down phones, years behind the curve on 3G, and worse pricing on data than some 3rd world countries to…

From zero to not one, not two but 4 (and soon to be more) national 3.5G HSPA GSM-standard networks in Canada
New price plans from Wind, DAVE and Public shaking up the landscape.
Fiercer competition between the major carriers now that they are all on the same network technology with all the same devices
FAST 3G networks at 21MBs (and 4 of em!) that’s faster than any 3g network in the US
Suddenly great deals on rocket sticks everywhere. And tethering that works and portable hotspots and other fun things.
ATT&T is not in Canada, count your lucky stars
Unlike on ATT&T, a 30% rate of call dropping New York or 100% anytime at SXSW in Austin, is not considered normal
Not one but 3 choices of carrier for the iPhone, and more choices for the latest Androids and Blackberries
Number portability, at last it was mandated and it gives consumers more power to switch
Wireless penetration rates rising rapidly, and the appetite for smartphones by consumers that is taking even the carriers by surprise
SIM cards on every network. (the market for unlocked phones is coming to Canada). Just wait for the Google phone store to get to Canada, unraveling the relationship between carriers and devices, sometime this year we can hope. And if we ever get Google voice, be ready for the perfect storm of telco disruption.
And skype is starting to work well on mobiles, just to turn the screws on the legacy telcos a little more

If I were a carrier, I’d be a little stressed out by this heightened level of competition in the sleepy old wireless north (aka Canada). For anyone else working with mobile, it’s a great time to be Canadian. Call it pent up demand, leap-frogging, or sweet redemption for years spent at the back of the pack, but suddenly Canada is looking good at wireless. Expect big things this decade.

Agree, disagree or flame away.

Kevin

I like your optimistic dream. Maybe someday it will be reality.
tjemartin

What good is being able to download at 21Mbps if you dont have unlimited data, like they do here in the US?? I wish I didn't have to, but I'll be back up in Canada for a bit, but I'm not gonna hold my breath about great changes in the Canadian wireless industry....Still too many shady things going on up there
tjemartin

forgot to add one more thing...

as quoted from the article "ATT&T is not in Canada, count your lucky stars"

Whats with that? I'd take AT&T over Robbers(as well as the other 2 crappy Canadian cell carriers) anyday
WirelessNorth

@tjemartin does Rogers beat AT&T? good questions. two answers for you

1. It's not all about bandwidth, the faster network apps also have better latency (pings), latency you notice as snappier web-apps, this will be important if we want to see cloud-based mobile apps that are as rich and responsive native ones.

Bandwidth, you can get lots of it, "robber's" famous $30 6/GB plan is or was a pretty damn good deal. At least as long as you also have a land-line broadband for your torrent needs or whatever.

2. AT&T is notorious amongst US iPhone users for their terrible and inconsistent network coverage (notice the audience boos at the last mac keynote at the mention of AT&T). That being said, perhaps we were being too charitable to Rogers, in downtown Toronto they've been dropping calls lately like were on fire.

Maybe Skype over a wireless 21MBps data pipe would be more reliable? :)
Somebody

And re: att call drop craziness.... have you ever looked at rogers? It is SO much better now that I've switched to WIND. I was getting 50%+ calls dropped with robbers. With wind... maybe one in an entire month -- and their network is still brand new and not completely debugged yet!
Somebody

21 Mbps, huh?
Sorry, not yet.
They're all at 7.2 still.
Not that there's a phone anywhere that can actually make use of that fast of a network.....
WirelessNorth

@somebody thank's for your comment. @Peter is right though, Rogers has 21MBps rocket sticks on the market now. Sure there's some "diminishing returns" to quote a friendly Rogers exec, but 21MBps over the air is pretty cool. Hope to get some comparative benchmarks on that up the site soon.
Peter

Wireless is not about phones. There are plenty of devices that can take advantage of using more bandwidth.

What I really would like to see is that carriers provide data plans that are not locked to a device. Ideally I want multiple SIM cards all linked to the same data plan, so I can stick them in all my (unlocked) wireless devices. And if the carriers really get smart they would offer wi-fi access in certain places. I will be more then happy to pay more for access using wi-fi when there is a fair coverage in places where wi-fi makes more sense then HSPA.
pmpapadopoulos

The telcos here in Canada are finally waking-up to the pent-up consumer demand. What would be great is a proper unbundling of the device from the network. What would have happened to the Internet and Computer industry if my ISP dictated which computers I could purchase and attach to the Internet?

Google Voice would be great! Skype for Android needs to be improved to the point where it actually works over a data network like it does on the iPhone. I am now using Fring with the Skype Add-On to do SkypeOut calls over data.
Canadian

Yay! Sounds good! As an immigrant who came to Canada 5 years ago (from Europe), I was utterly shocked, horrified and baffled by the extortion rates and gruesome, rigid plans. Up to this day I absolutely flatly refused to sign up for any carrier. Living in a small town, all these goodies won't be here this year, I know that, but at least the future is starting to look less bleak!
Right now i have the N1 on order and to carry me over, I purchased a Truphone Local Anywhere sim card. Canada, make it work, and make me switch over to a local company!

Wirelessnorth.ca

January 26th, 2010Is 2010 the year to stop worrying and love the carriers?

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