Telus Mobility set for 2012 LTE launch

UPDATED: Just months after announcing plans to begin rolling out upgrades to its HSPA+ network, Telus Mobility (TU) said it will have a LTE network up and running by early next year. Those LTE plans also show the marketing challenges carriers may be facing as it’s looking to differentiate the service with the “4G+” tag instead of the “4G” tag it’s currently using for its HSPA+ service.
Telus Mobility reported that its LTE plans will include field testing later this year and the completion of an RFP process that is currently underway with undisclosed vendors. The LTE network will initially run on the carrier’s advanced wireless services spectrum in the 1.7/2.1 GHz band that the carrier acquired in 2008 for $880 million and will initially be targeted at urban markets. Telus Mobility said it plans to expand the reach of its LTE services using 700 MHz spectrum that it expects the government to auction off next year.
“It will be critical for the Federal Government to enable an equitable opportunity for Telus to acquire 700 MHz spectrum in the auction planned for late 2012 to support our plans to expand availability of 4G+ LTE wireless service to rural markets,” said Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of Telus Mobility’s parent company Telus Corp.
Telus claims that the current HSPA+ network it launched in 2009, and recently announced plans to upgrade, covers more than 95% of the Canadian population.
Analysts were somewhat surprised by the accelerated LTE plans, noting they expected the carrier to continue to squeeze more out of its HSPA+ network before taking the plunge into the LTE pool.
“This was unexpected, as we had assumed that Telus would ‘sweat’ its HSPA+ network, which was built with Bell and only launched in November 2009,” noted Canaccord Genuity’s Dvai Ghose in an investor report.
The report also noted that fiscally the rapid move from HSPA+ to LTE is being spurred by infrastructure providers telling carriers that LTE technology can carry data traffic four-times cheaper than on HSPA, a financial consideration that could take the sting out of the need for a lot of new equipment to support LTE networks.
Ghose added that it would be expected that Telus’ network partner Bell Canada would also be announcing similar plans in the near term, which could put pressure on both nationwide rival Rogers Wireless as well as smaller players that are only now just deploying HSPA-based networks.
“While we assume that Rogers and Bell will now accelerate their own LTE roll out plans, we wonder if new entrants such as Wind
and Mobilicity and even Videotron and Shaw can overlay LTE quickly when they are still building HSPA+ networks,” the report noted. “Shaw, in particular, has yet to even launch any wireless services and so may now really be caught between HSPA and LTE.”
Shaw Communications Inc. reported earlier this year that it was pushing back its wireless deployment plans until early next year to ensure “an exceptional customer experience.”
Canaccord Genuity also noted that Telus’ claims that it would use the proposed 700 MHz spectrum to build out LTE services in rural markets is a good move in that it plays into the government’s desire to expand mobile broadband services to rural markets and could help ensure that rules for the 700 MHz auction don’t hinder the country’s larger carriers.
“Given the government’s focus on rural broadband, this could be a compelling argument,” the report stated.
Telus recently brought back the Clearnet brand for an unlimited calling service targeted at the increasing number of new entrants into the Canadian mobile space, some of which are still finding it difficult to get past regulatory mandates.
Rival Rogers Communications Inc. announced last year that it had began trialing LTE services in the Ottawa, Ontario, area with network partner Ericsson Canada using its AWS spectrum assets.