RCR Wireless is reporting that an announcement of a WCDMA/HSPA overlay network from Telus may be imminent. This not particularily unexpected, since CDMA carriers are losing significant roaming revenue and carriers worldwide are planning for LTE with the CDMA roadmap looking bleak post-EVDO.
Having this overlay network would bring in roaming revenue while the backbone networks are built to handle evolution up to LTE in the next few years. I would suppose that Telus and Bell would also start to tranistion their customer base over to the new devices as contracts come up.
This should be good news for their customers who will be able to take advantage of true world phones (not to mention iPhones) and more competition in the Canadian marketplace, which currently has only one GSM/HSDPA provider: the infamous Rogers.
UBS: Telus Mobility, Bell Canada looking at W-CDMA/HSPA overlay – - RCR Wireless News.
