Montreal Tech Watch

Today is the final day for any company wishing to be a mobile carrier in the next few years. Industry Canada is receiving applications, both from legacy carriers, and potential new entrants, from a pool of 105mhz.

Industry Canada suprised everyone last fall whey they announced that 40mhz of the total pool would be reserved for new carriers — read MTS AllStream, from Manitoba, and Videotron Inc., from Québec.

Concerning applications, WirelessNorth reports that MTS AllStream has placed $340 million, for the bid, enough to buy all of the 40Mhz and become then a national carrier, coast-to-coast. On the other hand, Québecor already unveiled their intentions, and announced they are ready to invest up to $500 million to build a 3G UMTS network for Québec and also extend the service to other Canadian provinces. Also expect the 3 big telcos to pour in substantial amounts of cash to prevent entry of potential new competitors.

Now, the big question is, why should you care? First, it’s well-known that data rates and cell phone plans in Canada are scandalously high and prevents mass adoption of the technology or development of third-party applications and services. For instance, fact is that Rogers is the only GSM carrier in Canada (Fido also uses GSM, but they are owned by Rogers). This monopoly drives prices up, and discourages new cell phone makers like Apple to enter the market.

In this case, Videotron already announced they will be using GSM rather than CDMA for their wireless network, and hopefully, it’s possible to envision an unlimited data plan in Canada, which will pave the way for the iPhone.

Follow further development @ wirelessnorth.