Bell Canada launches nationwide HSPA in November — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{Nokia Siemens and Huawei equipment} Bell Canada launches nationwide HSPA in November

5 Oct 2009 at 22:55 GMT Timo Poropudas

Bell Canada Monday announced that it will launch new HSPA network in November, months ahead of its original deadline to deliver in time for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Bell is the exclusive telecommunications partner for the Olympics.

Bell’s new network supports download speeds as high as 21 Mbps and it will deliver high-speed mobile access to 93% of the Canadian population across more than a million square kilometres.

"Bell announced in October 2008 that we would launch our next-generation network before the Winter Games in February 2010, and I am proud to say our team has over-delivered," said George Cope, President and CEO of Bell Canada.

"Together with our existing EVDO 3G network - already Canada's largest - HSPA will allow Bell to offer Canadians the best of all wireless worlds: the international reach of HSPA supporting full global roaming, the superior North American coverage offered by EVDO and the unique mobile products produced for each network technology," said Wade Oosterman, President of Bell Mobility and Chief Brand Officer for Bell.

The company emphasizes the underlying architecture of the new network:

"Bell is maximizing HSPA network advantage by building out the vast majority of our next-generation network with high-speed fibre - enough fibre to wrap halfway around the globe in fact - and an all-IP (Internet Protocol) architecture for enhanced reliability," said Stephen Howe, Bell Mobility's Chief Technology Officer.

"HSPA also clears the path to super high-speed 4G (fourth generation) LTE wireless in the future. Hats off to the thousands of Bell team members and Bell partners who've worked so hard to build not just Canada's, but indeed the world's, most state-of-the-art wireless network in record time."

The new network has been built with the latest HSPA infrastructure supplied by partners Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. Bell also recently announced a partnership with AT&T, the largest HSPA operator in the United States, for reciprocal North American roaming coverage. Bell will offer full international roaming capability on GSM, UMTS and HSPA networks in hundreds of countries around the globe at launch.

Bell says that it greatly reduced the cost and time to market for the new network by leveraging its existing national network-sharing agreement with TELUS Corporation. The agreement was originally established in 2001 to ensure fast delivery of and increased competition in national mobile data services, especially in rural and remote areas, and supported earlier launches of 1X and EVDO high-speed national networks.