Victoria cellphone users are unlikely to have access to the country's new wireless carrier until late this year.
According to Chris Robbins, chief customer officer for startup cellphone carrier Wind Mobile, the company is still in its infancy and unlikely to hit the West Coast until June and won't jump to Victoria until the fall.
"It's always tough with networks because they require permits, so you think it will take a week and it ends up taking a month," said Robbins, noting they have not yet started building a network in Victoria. "We have probably done the lease acquisitions (for cell antennae) in Victoria; we've probably found the sites we prefer but we haven't started construction yet."
Robbins said Victoria won't see service until at least late in the third quarter of 2010.
The company, operated by Globalive Wireless Management, launched in mid December in Calgary and Toronto with the big selling feature of not requiring contracts.
Wind offers three voice and text plans starting at $15 per month, all with unlimited calling between Wind customers, while the two more expensive options, at $35 and $45 allow for unlimited calling across the province and Canada respectively from the customer's "home zone."
Data plans add from $10 for unlimited instant messaging, Facebook and MySpace access to $35 a month for unlimited Internet data for phones.
While there are no contracts, Wind sells the handsets and phones without the deep discounting available at Telus, Bell or Rogers -- that means Wind plans to sell handsets to subscribers starting at $130 for a Huawei U7519 to $450 for the BlackBerry Bold 9700. Telus, as an example, offers discounts of as much as $500 on some of its phones.
Robbins said so far it's been a hit as the company boasts more than 10,000 subscribers.
Wind Mobile is in the final stages of preparing the Edmonton and Ottawa markets for launch late in the first quarter of this year, while they are in mid-construction of the network in Vancouver eyeing a late June launch date.
With launch will come the retail stores.
Robbins said Wind has secured spectrum in its target markets and estimates the company has spent in excess of $1 billion in building its Canada network with plenty of work left to go.
The tricky part can be getting approval from municipalities, he said. But he pointed out there is a tried-and-true path to success paved by years of work done by Telus, Rogers and Bell with municipal halls.
"The cities have it down to a science now, so we just follow along exactly what the city tells us to do," he said.
Wind Mobile is also looking at landing a powerful ally in its fight with the established carriers like Telus and Rogers, as it has pursued Google in order to get the Nexus One smartphone into Canada.
Google unveiled the Nexus One earlier this week -- a smartphone that will compete against devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry.
In this case, Wind has an advantage as it is the only carrier in Canada whose network operates on the AWS spectrum band, the same band as T-Mobile USA, the carrier Google has partnered with to launch the device in the U.S.
Rogers, Bell and Telus offer similar 3G networks, but none operate on the AWS band.
However, Google is quickly developing a version of the Nexus One for another U.S. carrier, Verizon Wireless, which will begin selling the phone this spring. Verizon Wireless uses a network standard called CDMA. Both Bell and Telus also use the standard alongside their joint HSPA network.
Rogers, the largest cellphone operator in Canada by subscriber numbers, relies solely on HSPA technology for 3G devices, like Apple's iPhone 3GS.
