VANCOUVER – Wireless upstart TNW Networks last week announced plans to launch a data-only smartphone-over-IP (SoIP) mobile service in Canada, billed as a high quality, low cost alternative to existing mobile services.
The CLEC said Friday that it will utilize Internet Personal Communication System (iPCS), its proprietary, patented, login-based mobile connectivity access technology, that provides Internet connectivity with voice and text services. The mobile service will be operated through its new subsidiary RuralCom Communications, acquired by TNW Networks Corp's parent company Investel Capital Corporation last week. Once that acquisition receives regulatory approved, RuralCom will operate as TNW Wireless.
Using RuralCom's Tier-2 850 MHz mobile licences (which cover the Alaska Highway region in the Yukon and northern British Columbia) and membership in the GSM Association, TNW Wireless plans to expand its existing home network service area, plus extend its service reach locally, nationally, and internationally, with its new technology.
“We’re actually able to extend our home public mobile network to Wi-Fi nodes through a technology called Wi-Node, which we have patented,” said TNW president and CEO Sandeep Panesar in an interview, “which allows us to extend our home public networks outwards and still be compliant with all of the rules and regulations including the roaming regulations as well to the tariffs that are currently put forth by all of the carriers.”
iPCS works on any unlocked Android or iOS phone as an interface application. Subscribers will be given a default phone number for their service from within the TNW Wireless home network but will have an operating iPCS phone number from a location of their choosing in North America. They will also have the option of keeping their existing phone number. They’ll also need a SIM card from TNW, “but our SIM is not bound to the user is the point whereas with any of these other services or traditional mobile, it’s one user, one SIM, one network. That’s the paradigm that we’ve broken,” said Panesar.
“The second piece that makes it unique and interesting is that this, outside of that, it’s a completely data-driven service, meaning that it’s all transacted with megabytes. There are no voice minutes. There’s no 'how many texts can you send', 100 texts, 50 texts, or anything like that. There is $10 a month, 500 megs and that 500 megs is a plan that you create afterward.”
iPCS provides services through 3G/4G in TNW Wireless' home coverage areas, extended coverage through its Wi-Node technology via open Internet Wi-Fi connections, or through roaming partners in the U.S. and Canada. Each MB of data provides approximately six minutes of continental North American talk time or several hundred texts (both unlimited while on Wi-Fi). TNW Wireless plans to offer 500 MB of data per month for $10 which it says includes an array of core services. Additional 100 MB blocks of data can be purchased for $2.90 and can remain in the subscriber's data bank until consumed.
iPCS technology is expected to be available on TNW Wireless in March 2017.
Plus, all of the TNW products and services don’t ride on the phone, but instead, sit in the cloud. “If your phone is lost then no big deal, you can grab another phone, using your password, and everything is instantly there. There’s not even a sync process or anything that,” he explained. “Everything resides in the cloud. You have complete flexibility and complete security from that standpoint to be able to make your plans, to be able to have multiple profiles on the same phone so you don't have to have a work phone and a personal phone.
“What we’ve done is extend our home network. In order for us to be compliant with the regulations, we have patented something called Wi-Node technology. What that allows us to do is a couple of things. One, when you are roaming or when you’re away from our home public mobile network and you’re connected to a Wi-Fi node, we actually have the technology that’s allowed us to extend our home public mobile network and allow you to still remain in that network because we’re backhauling everything securely to that home public network via data,” Panesar explained.
The service is also fully 9-1-1 emergency compliant, too. “With two of the features that iPCS offers is we have a giant 911 button on the interface, which will allow you to contact 911 and also send your GPS location to that service. Then the second is we have a panic button, which will allow you to force a call to a number of different parties simultaneously so that they can hear what’s going on. It will also get your GPS location as well, too, and that’s outside of the above and beyond the regular 9-1-1.”
In other company news, a numbered company formerly known as Téliphone Navigata Westel Communications (TNW), itself a TNW subsidiary, has filed for protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).
The filing came last month after a judge denied a civil claim that company filed against Telus, where TNW alleged that the big incumbent interfered with its planned acquisition of a Canadian telecom operator and an AWS spectrum license. Telus and TNW have a history of commercial disputes dating back at least four years, which sparked a consumer alert by the CRTC in September warning TNW customers of a potential service disruption.
When contacted by Cartt.ca, a Telus spokesperson said that TNW is currently more than $10 million in arrears and has failed to paid its debt.
“TNW has applied to the Court for CCAA creditor protection in order to restructure their business and financial affairs, and the Court has appointed a Monitor”, reads the emailed statement. “As part of this process, TNW has a short stay period before the parties re-appear before the Court on December 21st. We note that CCAA protection is reserved for insolvent companies that owe their creditors more than $5 million.”
“Part of it is over disputes over amounts that may or may not be owed. The (numbered company) has a claim against Telus out there for around $22 million… for damages for actions that they’ve alleged that have aggrieved them,” added Panesar. “Those are currently playing out in the courts.”
