While WIND Mobile was finally able to launch last week, it is only one of a number of new carriers to be launching in Canada. Public Mobile has pushed back its plans to launch in late 2009 and now appears set to launch in the first half of 2010. A civic strike that took place here in Toronto last summer appears to be the cause of the delayed launch.
Our original plan was to launch service in late 2009/early 2010. It now looks like we’ll be offering service in the first half of 2010. Last summer’s city strike in Toronto held up the permitting process for building our DAS (distributed antenna system) network. We want to make sure our customers have access to the best possible network technology available. So, rather than building 200 large towers, we’ll be using approximately 1,200 DAS nodes. The benefit to our customers is high quality reception and the ability for the network to handle a high volume of calls at the same time.
Like WIND Mobile earlier, it will also have to deal with a CRTC review before it can launch.