New Cell Phone companies coming to Canada and maybe the iPhone with them

The Government of Canada has just announced that new cellular spectrum licenses will be issued giving preference to brand new companies. What this means for cell phone yammerers is that they are not forced to subscribe to the Bell, Telus, Rogers triopoly for post paid contracted cell phone service. While this was tried before in the mid 1990's when Clearnet and Fido entered the Canadian market, but the new competitors collapsed and Clearnet was swallowed up by Telus and Fido was then bought up by Rogers.

That was then this is now. Back then cell phones were just for yakking and texting but now there is more interactive tasks that cell phones do things like Broadband over cellular, video calling and multimegapixel photo sharing are demanding uses of cellular networks. The traditional cell carriers have charged very high rates for data plans.

The long rumored future entrants in Canada cell phone industry is Quebec based Videotron and Manitoba Telecom Services which is looking to expand outside of Manitoba. Since MTS already has a CDMA network it goes without saying that is the technology that they will stay with for a nationwide network. Videotron and other entrants if they choose GSM could also offer the iPhone in Canada. Even the possibility of an upstart bringing the iPhone to Canadians would make Rogers reconsider their data plan rates making it feasible for Rogers to offer the iPhone. For all cell phone users in Canada that means interesting and hopefully less expensive times ahead.