Globalive: Canada’s New National Carrier
Globalive – New National Cell Phone Carrier for Canada
In 2007 / 2008 the Canadian Government released what is called Spectrum for Canadian companies to bid on. Spectrum relates to the “airspace” or “bandwidth” in which Canadian Cell Phone carriers can use to broadcast their cellular networks. Understanding spectrum can get a bit complicated but to simplify it, it means they have created more space for their to be more cell phone competitors.
(If you want to learn more about spectrum specificially, I recommend: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf08408.html)
One of the major players to buy some of this spectrum was a company called Globalive. Globalive has been providing wireline services across Canada since 1988. Some of their more well know services include Yak, OneConnect and 10-10-580 which provide a variety of discounted long distance services and business connectivity.
What is interesting about Globalive is that they were one of the major purchasers of national spectrum, in other words they have purchased the license to create and operate a new National Wireless Carrier in Canada (except Quebec). This means that not only will we have Rogers, Telus, and Bell, we will also have Globalive. Currently they are in the process of hiring their management team and constructing and installing their cellular towers, whichwill operate on the GSM network just like Rogers.
With a new national carrier in Canada this could mean a real opportunity for change in the market place. With actual competition in the GSM / HSPA market place and a new carrier looking for customers to re-pay their hundreds of millions of dollar investments it could make for a great benefit for us as Canadian wireless customers. Unlike the US that has over a dozen carriers, Canada essentially has only two. Globalive has the potential to shake the industry up. The question is how much of an impact will they have or whether they will become another one of the money hungry wireless giants.
A recent blog post at The Boy Genius Report reveals some of the insights and secrets into Globalive’s new wireless company, set to be called GlobalWireless. In his posting he reveals the handsets, pricing and usage that is slated to be part of GlobalWireless’s offer to Canadian consumers. Here are some of the highlights:
14 Handsets (including):
- Sony Ericsson TM506
- Nokia 5330 XpressMusic
- Nokia 5730 XpressMusic.
- Nokia 6070 Classic
- Sidekick LX 2009
- Sony Ericsson Xperia X1
- Global (HTC) G1
- Global (HTC) M1
Airtime Rates
- $29.99 – 350 minutes, unlimited e/w, unlimited incoming
- $39.99 – 650 minutes, unlimited e/w, unlimited incoming
- $59.99 – Unlimited minutes and incoming.
Included Services for Monthly Plans
- Unlimited SMS (Canada and USA), Voice Mail, Caller ID, Name Display, MissedCall, Call Waiting, Call Conferencing and Call Forwarding
Data Access Rates
- $10 – Unlimited email (20MB in reality), IM and “communities” (social media sites?)
- $23 – 2.5GB data and unlimited email
- $40 – Unlimited, plain and simple
Not to take too much from the Blog itself but those are some of the offerings slated for GlobalWireless. For the full details and information check out the Boy Genius Report directly through this link:
In reviewing this information I am both not blown away and not surprised. I didn’t expect their to be anything earth shatteringly different, but I did expect them to come in with less expensive options than this. Although this is just an early report on the carrier’s offer it does leave me a bit dissappointed. Hopefully as they get closer to launch date they will look at better and more cost effective plans and offers than can help entice new customers and to create more competition in the market. For now, we just need to wait and see.
For more information on Globalive and their company please visit http://www.globalive.com
Check your information. This was reported in May by Boy Genius report and a statement released by Globalive wireless exposed the report as false.
The biggest indicator of this is the fact that the handsets mentioned, don’t actually work on the network Globalive is building. They lack the frequencies required for the AWS spectrum Globalive owns.
Sorry to be a spoiler for your post.
[Reply]