Wind coming to Canada
 

Wind is coming to parts of Canada later this year. They own native AWS (UMTS 1700MHz) licenses and have an off-network roaming agreement with Rogers (850/1900MHz GSM&UMTS).

WIND | We're Bringing Change to the Canadian Wireless Industry

Looks like a franchise-type agreement, seeing as how Canada doesn't allow majority foreign ownership of telecoms.

Wind owns a pretty good chunk of Globalive, but within the foreign rules ownership allowance.

Hopefully the Canadian affiliate is as aggressive as its Italian parent (step-parent).

Vlad Vlad Vald.. Wind Canada will be nothing like the wind of Europe thats for sure. All the rest is still up in the air. They will be like Bell was. Equipment that will only work on one system, IMEI filtered so that only wind Canada equipment will work. You know this. I know this.

Had they grown the grapefruits and demanded the frequency be open for all then a real choice would have happened. As it looks they are all in bed together.

I think I read that there were 15, more or less handsets that work on the 1700MHz band. No blackberries no iphones.. does not look good.

There aren't many 1700 MHz phones right now, but there will be in time. It wasn't all that long ago that 850 MHz GSM phones were pretty rare. I remember being excited to get my Nokia 6590i. :)

Doesn't that Nokia Rover RX-51 tablet that's coming soon use the AWS (1700 MHz) band. That would be a good start on some decent non-Android devices.

You are right in that it really hasn't been very long ago since even plain GSM phones lacked 850 MHz. It seemed to have taken about 3 years for each 'new' band to become commonplace on devices (first 850 GSM, then 850/1900 UMTS came about some time after 2100 UMTS, now it seems to be headed that way with AWS). The real problem likely will be including every used band in future devices. With LTE coming, it seems this number will only get higher (off the top of my head there are the 2600 & 700 MHz bands set aside for LTE, right?).

I wonder when GSM will be shut down in favour of re-farming those bands to for use in 3/4/5(!) G. Have there been any talks of this happening just yet or do we still have another 5+ years to go?

Jim I agree with you BUT why did Rogers keep the 850 /900 /1800 /1900 band?
My point is Wind EU is quad band so they are going stay that way for quite a while. So right now who is 1700? And who is saying that there is going to be a shift to 1700 MHz Not rogers they bet 500 million( could have been more ) that it would stay 850 /900 /1800 /1900. No real info has come out of Wind really so I wonder what's fact and what is fiction

G

Adam you make a good point but with the IMEI blocking that device will not work with Wnd Canada. That much has been confirmed.

G

Rogers bought 1700 MHz spectrum too, and will be deploying it. So did Bell, Telus, SaskTel Mobility, and MTS, all of whom will be deploying HSPA and LTE (Telus and Bell already have test networks running in some major cities on 850 and/or 1900 MHz). It's just a matter of time before the hardware comes.

The stumbling block is that up until this year, the only GSM provider at 1700 MHz was T-Mobile in the US. Now that Canada has auctioned off that spectrum and many providers will be using it, the phones will come. There are already a few that T-Mobile US is using. More will follow.

Watch - I bet the fourth iPhone supports the band.