Competition for Rogers
Jamie Sturgeon
Province
Telus Corp. and Bell Canada are no longer playing catch-up to chief rival Rogers Communications in wireless as both turn on their advanced networks this week and begin selling Apple’s acclaimed iPhone among several new mobile phones once unavailable to them.
In fact, Rogers — for years the market leader in wireless services — could be the one falling behind.
To start, both Telus and Bell are trying to boost sales by sharply undercutting Rogers’ pricing on voice and data plans for the widely popular iPhone handset.
The coverage areas of the two phone companies’ new networks are also notably larger than that of Rogers, pushing the high-speed packet-access (HSPA) technology — which allows for wireless download speeds several times faster than dial-up — into communities outside major cities, bringing broadband to tens of thousands of rural residents for the first time.
Telus’s network went live Thursday, while Bell Canada got a slight jump, launching its service on Wednesday.
Telus also began to get a big dose of retail exposure Thursday in Ontario — where Rogers has its biggest footprint — by introducing wireless services through Black’s Photo Corp., the photo retail chain it acquired in September.
Black’s has 114 stores across Canada, with more than 70 concentrated in the country’s most-populous province.
Natale said the outlets will start selling wireless plans for iPhones and others, including the new BlackBerry Bold 9700, immediately.
In total, Telus will begin offering no less that five new handsets that operate on the HSPA standard, including the HTC Hero, the company’s first device that uses Google Inc.’s Android open-source operating system.
Rogers cut prices on some new phones Wednesday in anticipation. However, it left its rate plans for the iPhone untouched. The base plan for the handset is $65 a month, the company’s website said. Base plans on the iPhone at Telus and Bell start at $45 and $50, respectively.
The cheaper plans, however, come with reduced minutes and prepaid web usage.
Rogers gives subscribers 250 minutes for daytime calls and a full gigabyte of data, Telus and Bell give users 100 minutes and half the amount of data.
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