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you sure wouldn’t mistake it’s looks for something Apple would have come up with. Still it’s the most coveted handset to come out since, well the bold or the iPhone 3G.

You might even get excited about snagging an G1 on eBay. The good news is you can get them unlocked, and the T-mobile version uses the same AWS 3G spectrum band as Canada. The bad news is, you’ll be stuck on EDGE until AWS towers/equipment actually get rolled out (say mid to late next year?), by which point surely other g-phone models will be out. Who knows, maybe even a Canadian carrier will get their hands on one?

^{Photo credit: Romainguy}

This is huge news for the wireless industry in Canada. We are hearing strong rumours than both Bell and Telus will be switching (or at least launching) an HSPA (GSM) network in Canada by 2010. You heard it here first. Rumours and speculation about the switch have been swirling for a while, but this time it looks like it’s for real.

Ever since they purchased FIDO and became Canada’s only GSM carrier, Rogers has been holding it over and winning customer and revenue share from Bell and Telus. GSM phones are increasingly becoming the world standard with only Bell, Telus, some of the larger US carriers and a few others internationally are the last significant holdouts. Increasingly high end phones are coming out only on GSM (like the nokia n-series or the iPhone) or the CDMA equivalents may come out only 6 months later.

GSM also has the handy feature of the SIM card, making it much easier to buy and sell unlocked phones or move devices between carriers.

We had thought that Bell/Telus would try to coast it out for 4G aka LTE sometime in 2012. LTE is the global industry’s plan to finally converge on a “single” 4G wireless standard. It seems though that Telus/Bell couldn’t wait and they will be migrating to LTE by way of HSPA.

Suddenly, that 30MHz or so of combined national spectrum that the two are bidding on seems like it could become an awfully handy way of switching horses.

In addition to the new entrants, having two more incumbents move to GSM inevitably will create more competition through better access to high-end devices, as well an easier ability for subscribers to switch carriers (if not for those 3year contracts).

We at WirelessNorth.ca welcome all our new GSM overlords. We love the smell of competition in the morning.

^{All links to wikipedia, invariably useful if ever you need help decoding the acronym soup of wireless standards.}

Calling it the “Betamax” of wireless standards, there was a piece in the Toronto Star this weekend covering growing speculation that Telus (if not Bell as well) may switch their network to GSM.

“The CDMA format is still common in North America but is increasingly falling out of favour as the rest the world moves toward GSM. A switch would allow Telus subscribers to roam on more overseas networks and choose from a much larger (and cheaper) selection of cellphones built for global markets, where some 80 per cent of cellphone users now operate on a GSM format.”

Despite the enormous cost of the switchover there’s a few reasons to believe it’s ultimately inevitable that one or both of Telus and Bell will go GSM. GSM is by far the dominant world standard, giving GSM operators access earlier to a larger pool of hadsets and equipment (the iPhone, for example, is currently GSM-only) and, for a more immediate business case, is roaming.

Any new entrant in the current spectrum auction would go GSM, opening up a competitive market for GSM handsets (and SIM cards) in Canada for the first time since Rogers bought out Microcell several years ago.

At present almost any international vistor to Canada will be carrying a GSM device, and they run hundreds of millions in roaming minutes a year. Currently ALL of that revenue goes to Rogers.

You can bet the backroom deal offering with the equipment vendors is going on something fierce at Telus these days. We’d peg Ericsson as the likely big winner if Telus makes the switch.

Link, Toronto Star Telus considers dumping its `Betamax’ of wireless networks

Thanks to Mack D. Male for the tip.