Just mentioned on the CBC: Telus, Bell to switch cellphone technology: report
It seems they want to catch up to Rogers and its subsidiary Fido, and take advantage of greater choice of GSM phones, plus lucrative roaming fees from GSM visitors.
Meh. They’ve been singing this song for several years now - as they should, given that it’s inevitable that they’ll make the switch eventually). It never seems to go past speculation and forecasting, though.
IMO, it’ll be at least another couple of years before there are any official announcements.
This kind of project will require massive amounts of time, money and planning, since both carriers will need to replace their entire network infrastructure and then migrate their million-plus customer base to the appropriate handsets. For bonus happy fun for the hapless schmo who ends up as project manager… they’ll also be dragging along smaller carriers like Koodo, Virgin and Primus, who resell Bell/Telus airtime under their own branding, so that’ll slow things down even further.
I’m more interested to see what’ll happen as soon as the dust settles on the spectrum auction, to be honest.
If Bell go through with this, as is inevitable, and growing more so by the day, this could be a tremendously game-changing thing. The spectrum auction will be interesting, but none of it is going to be any significant threat to Rogers, at least not for a long time. Bell, however, is huge, and they could present the most significant threat Rogers has ever faced. The added competition would be a big win for Canadians, who may for the first time ever see proper voice and data rates more in line with US carriers.
I for one welcome our new GSM co-overlords.