Mobile VoIP taking steps in Canada

Mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) appears to be gaining some momentum in Canada with the first such deployment of its kind in the country announced in Montreal earlier this month. Montreal-area ISP Radioactif.com in conjunction with telecom equipment installer Nomade Telecom are deploying a Wi-Fi/WiMAX network to cover about 50% of the city and 90% of residents. There has been a lot of talk - perhaps hype is a better word - around the potential of mobile VoIP over Wi-Fi to reduce wireless users' dependence on traditional GSM or CDMA mobile networks. It remains to be seen whether this type of service will make a dent in the increasing minutes of use the wireless carriers are experiencing. Despite the potential of replacing traditional wireless with mobile VoIP over Wi-Fi, Nomade Telecom says the Montreal service isn't focused on that. "It's not really in competition ," Luc Picard tells Report on Wireless in an interview. Referring to the service as a "home phone extension," he says that the service should appeal to the mother at home with children who needs to go to the grocery store. Instead of carrying a cellphone, she can simply take the home phone with her. Picard is also bullish on the potential uptake of the service. According to a survey the two companies had conducted, about 70% of survey respondents were interested in the service. The service is priced competitively and the companies should be able to secure subscribers. For the flat monthly fee of $30, a subscriber receives high-speed Internet with download speeds of up to 5 Mbps and telephone service. Nomade and Radioactif.com also have some aggressive subscriber projections. "We plan to have 7% of the population," Picard says, adding that this is a conservative estimate and includes households taking both the Internet and telephony service as well as those taking one or the other. The service, scheduled to go live in September, should cover 300 square kilometres of Montreal by 2009. The network will consist of Wi-Fi for customer access, with access points being linked by WiMAX, and the WiMAX base stations connected to the Internet using a fibre-optic network. Once deployment across Montreal is complete, the companies say they will embark on an aggressive network expansion to a number of other cities in the country, including Quebec City, Halifax, Toronto, Windsor, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

Mobile VoIP taking steps in Canada

News | June 29, 2007

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