MONTREAL – Videotron officially launched its own wireless service Thursday morning in a glitzy, televised press conference held simultaneously in Montreal and Quebec City.
Its new "3G+" service is available immediately in the greater Montréal and Québec City areas. With multiple plans and a dozen handsets, Videotron will bundle the wireless service with Internet and cable, offering unlimited contracts that allow customers to opt out at any time. Customers will also be able to make unlimited local calls and watch selected television channels on their mobile devices with a branded mobile content portal called illico mobile – an extension of the company’s digital TV and online video brand.
Videotron is launching with 12 mobile handsets, including the Google Nexus One (HTC) – making it the first Canadian service provider to carry a handset loaded with the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system – and the first Garmin phone in Canada, the Nuvifone A5, which comes with free traffic info and alerts included for three years. Missing from its roster of phones is Apple’s iPhone, which isn’t built to operate on the AWS spectrum Videotron owns. The company says it is talking with Apple and hopes the company will build future iPhones to this spectrum specification.
“For years, Quebecers and all Canadians have been paying for the dearth of competition in mobile communication services, being saddled with exorbitant rates for limited service on creaky platforms,” said Quebecor Media president and CEO, Pierre Karl Péladeau, in the announcement. “We therefore pledged to bring Quebecers better technology at a lower price in order to make the marketplace more competitive and make mobile services more accessible to consumers. With Videotron’s new services and price plans, that day has definitely arrived.”
Messaging packages start at $5 per month, and a mobile Internet key promises to support data transfer speeds of up to 21 mbps. Videotron said that its network will eventually reach mobile speeds of up to 42 mbps, thanks to its dual-carrier HSPA+ technology.
Customers in the Sherbrooke, Mauricie, Saint-Hyacinthe and Beloeil areas will be able to sign up in October, and service will be rolled out to Mont-Tremblant, Drummondville and Victoriaville by year’s end.
“We want to offer our service to as many Quebecers as possible and we expect to be able to serve almost our entire potential customer base by 2011, including the Saguenay / Lac St-Jean region at the beginning of the year and Gatineau / Ottawa in the spring,” said Videotron president and CEO, Robert Dépatie. “I urge people to find out about our service plans before renewing their agreement with their current carrier. They won’t regret it!”
