Business
Wireless Wars
By Jami Makan published Nov 1, 2009
Olympic fever and deregulation are transforming the landscape for wireless providers
As our helicopter circles Anvil Island in Howe Sound, just off the Sea to Sky Highway, someone’s mobile phone rings. The copter is so deafening it’s impossible to hear the ringtone directly, but our padded green headsets pick up the interference, a clicking sound: dit, dit di-dit, dit di-dit.
Nathan Dubeck, the pilot, has heard it before. Having logged more than 4,000 hours of flight time, he knows exactly what causes this sort of radio interference. “Someone’s got a GSM phone,” he tells us.
An awkward silence fills the cabin. In Canada, only the Rogers wireless network uses GSM (Global System for Mobile) technology, one method of sending data through the air at high frequencies. But onboard the chopper are employees of a rival wireless company: a Bell manager, a Bell communications officer, a Bell photographer, and a Bell contractor. Is there a traitor among them, someone using a Rogers phone?
“Busted!” the communications lady exclaims, and everyone bursts out laughing.
It’s a funny moment, but wireless competition in Canada is no joke: according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the country’s mobile wireless sector had roughly 22 million subscribers and revenues of $16 billion in 2008. With so much money at stake, it’s no surprise that the 2010 Winter Olympics have become ground zero in the wireless wars.
In 2004, Bell outbid Vancouver-based Telus (the third of the big three wireless companies, which together cover 94 percent of the Canadian market) for official sponsorship rights to the 2010 Games. (Rogers, which has the greatest market share, did not bid.) Bell’s success was a slap in the face for Telus, which spent more than $4 million bringing the event to Vancouver by contributing ideas to the city’s proposal, building the initial 2010 website, and funding community initiatives.
The winning bid? Ninety million dollars cash, $50 million for marketing and outreach programs, and $60 million worth of telecommunications services. Bell sees the Games as a chance to increase its market share in the West. “It’s all about business,” explains Jon Arnold of J Arnold & Associates, an industry analyst. “For them, it was an important coup to get the rights to 2010, right in Telus’s back yard.”
As part of the services component of their sponsorship, Bell has built a solar-powered dish on Anvil Island to strengthen the wireless signal in this remote area between Vancouver and Whistler. It has also built 41 other “cell sites” around the Lower Mainland, and connected each major venue to a new 285-kilometre fibre-optic cable, so that broadcasters can beam sporting events around the planet. Norm Silins, the Bell manager with us in the helicopter, calls it “the widest deployment of our capabilities for any customer, ever."
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lol.. yes.. me too mobile development.
Costumes
Halloween costumes
Oh yeah, just imagine how many people will be in Vancouver on winter Olympic games.And the biggest part or nearly all of them will be actively using their mobile phones. To call friends and talk about some sport events, about nice moments. It will be awesome for sure. So as the mobile sector is one of the most growing sectors in the world, naturally wireless sector is growing too. Every human tries to find the best mobile plan with the fastest mobile internet and so on. I mean that those wireless wars is a natural thing. Thanks for the great article and I will be waiting for more nice ones in the future too. Thanks!
Sincerely,
Tim Nollton from mobile development
