Bell announced today that they will be upgrading their networks to 3G. They also have plans for 4G as well, aka LTE. What this means is that Bell (and Telus eventually) will be iPhone compatible. From my understanding, it would be compatible when on 3G, not 2G (edge). This is interesting news and will probably lead to better and more affordable services in the years to come. Does this help us at all today? No, not at all. But they should have it up and running by the 2010 Olympics so that they can cash in on the roaming.
Here is the press release:
Bell announces Third Generation (3G) wireless network capabilities to ensure it offers Canadians the complete range of high-speed mobile data coverage, services and handset options. The investment also confirms the company’s migration path to the global Fourth Generation (4G) Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard.
“Investing in broadband networks and services and accelerating wireless are strategic imperatives for the Bell team, and they are key to achieving our goal - to be recognized by customers as Canada’s leading communications company,” said George Cope, President and Chief Executive Officer of BCE and Bell Canada.
“This investment initiative builds on our industry-leading wireless service - which already offers access to the largest and fastest network across North America- to deliver Canadians the broadest choice in high-speed wireless service, while confirming our path forward to LTE, the global 4G wireless broadband standard.”
Maximizing choice in wireless
As it continues to expand and enhance its national 3G CDMA/EVDO service, Bell will also overlay this industry-leading network with HSPA technology, maximizing the latest-generation wireless options the company can offer customers across Canada.
Bell wireless customers will be able to choose between EVDO - already the dominant 3G standard in Canada and across North America - and HSPA, which is rapidly becoming the main platform with carriers outside North America. At the same time, overlaying HSPA on its national network will offer Bell the most efficient upgrade path to the 4G LTE broadband standard in coming years.“This network initiative is proof positive of Bell’s new ‘better’ brand promise - in this case, ‘Wireless just got better.’ We fully anticipate that our expanded national 3G networks will continue to offer Canadian consumers and business clients the best and broadest coverage and now with an unbeatable range of high-speed handsets and service options,” said Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility and Chief Brand Officer for Bell. “As the exclusive telecommunications partner to the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, we look forward to delivering these enhanced capabilities before Canada hosts the world in 2010.”
Fourth Generation LTE
LTE is the 4G wireless broadband standard that will be rolled out globally post-2010, delivering extremely fast broadband mobile data speeds and a wide range of new mobile multimedia and personalized data services.“Bell’s transition to the global 4G LTE standard with a combined EVDO and HSPA network path aligns us with more than 30 major carriers worldwide planning a similar move to LTE,” said Stephen Howe, Senior Vice President, Wireless Network and Chief Technology Officer for Bell Mobility. “This broad global technology ecosystem will mean a fast, efficient and cost-effective network transition to 4G LTE, and access to the broadest possible range of next-generation phones and data services.”
Bell will greatly reduce time to market for its network overlay by leveraging its existing national network-sharing agreement with TELUS Corporation. The agreement was originally established in 2001 to ensure the fast delivery of and increased competition in national mobile data services, especially in rural and remote areas.
Following a comprehensive vendor evaluation process, Bell has chosen Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei as infrastructure providers for its national network overlay.
Basically this is cool to hear today, but overall, it doesn’t affect us today, and most of us still have 2 years and 9 months to go in our contracts.
I’m not really a fan of Telus and Bell, Telus ticked me off and Bell has always seemed like a second rate carrier to me. If they do offer some great plans in the future, then I would consider switching. It doesn’t get much better than what we have now though. If I were able to get unlimited iPhone data for like $10 and a $20 voiceplan, I would probably switch. If that is the case though, I do see Rogers/Fido adjusting things to keep customers. I like to call Telus and Bell…Bellus.
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October 11th, 2008 at 1:51 am
does this mean bell is finally going to have sim cards?
October 11th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Good question, I guess it must
October 11th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Bell actually seemed better to me than rogers.. there plans are a whole lot better.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:00 am
ya but there phones suck the big one.
October 11th, 2008 at 8:17 am
sim cards… on a bell phone.. THE MADNESS lol..
this will be interesting to see having sim compatable phones on all of the major canadian networks.. yay for competition.. this means better for us since it used to be only rogers for sim card phones :D
October 11th, 2008 at 8:37 am
lol… Bellus never offer good plan.
Also, they’re charging SMS now.
Why do we want to switch?
October 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
@Generalinq:
Telus and Bell’s phone choices are limited due to CDMA, once their HSPA Network is up they will have much better selection of phones.
@MarcoX: I know it dosent make it any better, but some of the US carriers were charging for incoming SMS before telus. and most people have a sms plan anyway witch gives you unlimited coming texts even if its only the 30 messages pack for 3 dollars. not a big deal imo. Its a moot point anyway, cause i will bet you that they will stop charging for incoming texts before 2010.
October 11th, 2008 at 9:45 am
rogers has been charging us whatever they feel cause they know they have a monopoly on the good phones. Bell, which doesn’t have good phones, has to charge cheaper to get customers. After the transition, bell and telus will have the advantage of both networks. Sidenote, I just realized holding down certain letters on the keyboard for about a second puts out a side panel of the letter with different accents! Useful for French…..: (
October 11th, 2008 at 10:19 am
It’s really about time. More and more future phones won’t even work on the Bell and Telus networks. That said I’m still looking forward to our new national carrier Globalive/Yak and what they can offer. After the spectrum auction the company said they may have services up and running by Easter of 2009. Fingers crossed, I’m with Fido right now, AKA Rogers.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:35 am
When Bell came into the Valley here they really went after our office and similar businesses with a vengeance. Excellent plans as compared to Rogers. I held off as I knew Rogers had more towers and reception was more important to me than minutes.
I am glad I did as 90 % of the people that switched had horror stories with their billing. Some for 6 months before Bell got it right. Plus the amount of dropped calls were 10 fold compared to mine.
I wouldn’t switch even though Rogers can be a pain in the ass sometimes too.
October 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I really happy that we will soon have a choice, more choices. It will not just between Rogers, Telus, and Bell anymore. We need more competition into the GSM arena to push the price down. It is such a joke that we Canadian have to pay the system access fees and CallerID. The Americans have more choices and hence their cellphone plans are a lot competitive than we do.
God bless open access to more mobile players.
October 11th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Hello?? Am I missing something here?
The iPhone will only run a GSM network. No where in that article does it say that Bell is switching to GSM.
All it says is that they are upgrading their 3G network, which means phones will have faster internet access. 3G has nothing to do with GSM.
You will never be able to use an iPhone on Bell or Telus. (Unless Apple releases an iPhone that is CDMA compatible.)
October 11th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Please read what K said. I couldn’t said it better myself.
3G and the upcoming 4G can work on both GSM and WCDMA.
In Japan, most phones are WCDMA and they are on 3.5G/4G network.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Damn next year Apple will announce the iPhone 4G and then in October 5G will come out lol.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
@K, and Top Cat:
your wrong and right at the same time, telus and bell are NOT going GSM.
They already have the CDMA version of 3G aka EVDO. They are going HSPA, witch does mean Sim cards and what not, and the iPhone in thery could work, BUT, i beleave that they are using a different band for upload and download, sorta like T-Mobile, so the iPhone 3G, prolly wont work, and HSPA is WCDMA, WCDMA ? CDMA.
October 11th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
@Mikomi
Huh? That’s what I said. They are NOT going GSM. Even some WCDMA phones can use Sim Card but it is still under WCDMA and not GSM.
Did I misread what you said? :/
October 12th, 2008 at 12:12 am
@K
Oh yeah forgot the other half that HSPA is also directly related to GSM, and potentally the iPhone 3G could work on telus, cause it has HSPA, but in this case its all about the frequencies that telus and bell use.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Oh also Telus/Bell’s network of HSPA will be bigger coverage area, kinda like they have now cause they are keeping their roaming agreement, so telus will probably work on the west, and bell the east. making their coverage potentially area greater then robbers
November 29th, 2008 at 2:12 am
To: ” K ”
Your foolish!! (Do some research),
It was made real clear that the 3G and 4G LTE networks are HSPA which is essentially the GSMA 3G network that Rogers is on… (and Hundreds of other international carriers.
http://hspa.gsmworld.com for more info on HSPA.
The Iphone will be launched with Bell before VAN 2010. I’ve read in a few places that it will be launched before the end of 2009. As the HSPA 4G compatible overlay with Bell has been in the works for a long time now, planning and implementing. I’m sure a couple of test markets will be opened relatively soon and a select few will have access to these phones…
April 27th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
“K” is right. Bell WILL NOT be able to offer the iPhone. the 3G/4G data connection Bell plans to use, has nothing to do with GSM. They aren’t switching to GSM, and they will not be able to offer the iPhone. there is “3G” (3rd gen) data connection styles for both GSM, and CDMA, but they are not related, it is just a blanket-term used to describe the generation of data connection each different technology uses.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
I bet Bell will also get the i-phone without the Wi-Fi (free) capability. They did that with the HTC Touch. The only cie that kept it was Rogers.
July 6th, 2009 at 8:33 am
i hope bell gets the iphone i have the black berry storm and i dont like it at all
July 8th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
IPhone will come to Bell and Telus.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=afrkMEggtdi4
August 3rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
GSM does not mean Sim cards, though they may be common overseas many GSM phones sold in NA did not have sim cards – I see the sim card approach as simply a network-access financial-authorization technique at the cost of hardware in the phone (card slot & circuitry), an alternative to roaming lists and cellular site databases commonly used in NA. (A challenge with the old AT&T roaming network compromised of a variety of local systems.)
Very interesting in the quoted Bell announcement is an inference
of a dual mode network, CDMA and HSPA simultaneously – i.e. accommodating phones previously not compatible with a particular provider’s network. Such things are in principle becoming feasible with software-controlled radios and even more compact circuitry. In practice there’s much detail and cost – and I ask at what price in efficient bandwidth use (which is not a problem in frontier areas). Very powerful capability.
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
A small caution re terminology:
> GSM is not GSM (an underlying protocol varies, with what at least some are calling GSM to be based in future if not already on WCDMA - HSPA is based on WCDMA)
> CMDA is not necessarily CDMA, at least not when there’s a prefix.The confusion may be that CDMA is a basic technique that can be used in different applications, cellular being one. So we have to be careful with what Bell/Telus are saying about CDMA with LTE.
Detail implementation may vary in different locations, so phones aren’t compatible.
Frequencies vary between countries.
Hopefully things are being standardized, but some of that requires agreement by governments who are notoriously uncooperative. For example, Boeing gave up on wireless InFlightEntertainment distribution in the airplane cabin because there were too many conflicting regulations especially for their customers who would have to get licenses from many countries.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:34 am
The pricing plan I saw on phonereviews.com, bells iPhone pricing SUCKS. Its more than Rogers and Fido. They require as well 36 mth contracts, but the phone price is roughly $200 more with bell than Rogers Fido, haven’t seen anything for telus yet.