Mark Evans

Wireless Broadband Coming to Canada…finally!

It's taken many years but wireless broadband is coming to Canada after Rogers and Bell agreed to create a joint venture
that will spend $200-million over the next three years to roll out the
service to 40 urban centres and 50 rural centres across the country. This is great news if you're
living in a rural community that's currently unserved or under-served. It's also
exciting news if you live in an urban community and looking for
portable broadband service. A part of the JV is Bell buying Craig McCaw's 25% stake - which means McCaw can focus his attention and cash on Clearwire
and its expansion across the U.S. The Bell-Rogers JV will not use the
Wi-Max standard but, rather, the NextNet technology developed by NR
Communications. It is often described as pre-Wi-Max. As for speed,
Rogers played it coy, citing competitive reasons while a senior Bell
executive happily admitted downloads speeds will be 1.5MBps and 1MBps
upstream. Frankly, the only negative to come from the JV is the fact
it's not Microcell-Allstream-NR, which unveiled a $135 million plan to
launch Inukshuk in late-2003. If this plan had gone ahead, it would
have created a third option for high-speed access to compete against
Rogers and Bell. This would have provided rural customers with service and made the market more competitive. The high-speed troika failed to come together after Allstream was acquired by Manitoba Telecom for $1.7 billion in March 2004 and Microcell was bought by Rogers in May, 2004 for $1.4-billion.