Mush 3G!
Canadian wireless carriers take pragmatic approach to 3G services and networks
By James Careless
from the March 19, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
In the race to bring advanced 3G wireless services to the masses, Canada is fielding its own entry. In 1999, Canada was the first North American country to launch wireless Web browsing. Now the Great White North is poised to strike the iron while it's hot once again, this time with a first-generation 3G rollout scheduled to be completed by the end of 2001.
Leading the charge in Canada is Bell Mobility, which launched the aforementioned first-of-its-kind wireless Web browser in May 1999. Presaging the company's ambitious 3G plans, the company is currently testing a ten-site 3G network in Kitchener-Waterloo, an area just west of Toronto. The 3G trials currently running use 1xRTT software developed by Nortel Networks, and Bell Mobility hopes to launch commercial service by the end of the year.
"We've had this 3G network up and on the air since November of last year," says Brian O'Shaughnessy, Bell Mobility's vice president of wireless technology. "We're running trials with mobiles driving around the city between cells, carrying calls running at an average 100 kbps per second."
But, O'Shaughnessy admits, the current incarnation of pre-commercial 3G services is on the bleeding edge of the technology, so to speak. The Nortel Networks software being tested in the trials is still in development by the company, and is far from ready for commercial deployment.
So why did Bell Mobility start 3G field tests before the operating software was fully finished? "We got in fairly early with Nortel on this one because we figured this is going to be a fundamental change to the way the technology works," answers O'Shaughnessy. "We wanted to learn a lot earlier (in the technology cycle) than we normally would, and Nortel wanted a customer to basically work through the bugs and get the system to air more quickly."
Other players in the Canadian wireless game, like Microcell Connexions, whose parent company Microcell PCS oversees the 'Fido' PCS network in Canada, are trialing new wireless technologies as well, but not necessarily 3G. Microcell and other members of the North American GSM Alliance--including Cingular Wireless and VoiceStream PCS--have been running an experimental W-CDMA (wideband CDMA) in Montreal since 1999. But the company has been slow to grasp 3G as a viable technology for today, as opposed to some distant time in the future. The company has yet to see a viable commercial market for 3G, says Alex Brisbourne, Microcell's vice president and general manager of Internet business development. As a result, "we don't have a firm committed date to roll out 3G technology," he says. Dismissing Bell Mobility's 1xRTT as being closer in performance to 2.5G GPRS (General Radio Packet Service) than "true 3G," Brisbourne adds, "We don't expect it to take place before late 2003."
As for Canada's other wireless carriers, to stay in tune with its U.S. partner, Rogers AT&T is currently overlaying its TDMA networks with 2.5G GSM-GRPS gear. As for 3G, it will have to wait awhile, according to David Neale, the company's vice president of new product development. (He adds that Bell Mobility will also have to wait, since "1xRTT does not fit the definition of 3G in any way.")
That said, Rogers AT&T is positioning itself for the impending future of 3G services. According to Neale, "the components that go into establishing a GRPS network are the same primary network elements that get us across into wideband CDMA." Also, Rogers AT&T recently bought additional spectrum across Canada, giving it at least 45 MHz in every major market across the country. According to Rogers AT&T CEO Charles Hoffman, the extra bandwidth will help "reduce the cost of bringing the high-speed data rates associated with GPRS--and later 3G--to our customers."
Rounding out the Canadian picture, Telus Mobility/Clearnet intends to start testing 1xRTT as well later this year, says Robert Blumenthal, the company's vice president of wireless Internet service. However, like most other carriers, Telus Mobility is focused on rolling out 2.5G.
In terms of actual transmissions over the new trial networks, early entrants have trailed some advanced applications and services. Microcell has already demonstrated video telephony, wireless Web browsing, and multimedia file transfers at 64 kbps. Meanwhile, Bell Mobility's technicians already have rebroadcast streaming video from the Web, in real time.
"It was actually quite funny," recalls O'Shaughnessy. "The guys were out in the field, and someone said, 'I wonder if we can run video over this?' They just tried it and it worked!"
So does this success mean that Bell Mobility will launch broadband 3G services soon? Not exactly.
In fact, Bell Mobility shares Microcell's skepticism over the viability of 3G services, especially while 2.5G technology is just starting to roll out. As a result, Bell Mobility intends to use its 3G plant to do "exactly what we're doing today, but a lot more of it," O'Shaughnessy says.
The bottom line: the country which pioneered North American wireless Web services is taking a more pragmatic approach to 3G. In fact, Canada's attitude to 3G revolves more around results and revenue rather than promise or predictions. Until one of the players starts bringing in that 3G revenue, its carriers will be content to operate at a 2.5G level.
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