Bell Canada, Telus jump on LTE bandwagon

Canadian CDMA operators Bell Canada and Telus today became the latest CDMA operators to join the Long Term Evolution (LTE) ranks, announcing today they would adopt the GSM 4G standard for a joint future network. But unlike Verizon Wireless and Alltel, which also plan LTE networks, Bell and Telus aren’t just harmonizing their 4G plans with that of the global GSM community, but also their 3G plans. The two have agreed to build a High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) overlay to their existing CDMA EV-DO networks using Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies equipment.

The HSPA network is targeted to go live in early 2010, using Telus and Bell’s 1900 MHz PCS and 850 MHz cellular spectrum. The flat IP network core would then be used as the foundation for the future LTE deployment, which would launch in 2012. The companies did not name any costs for the new networks, though Telus stated that the costs of initial HSPA rollouts were factored into the Canadian $1.9 billion (US $1.6 billion) projected capex for the year. Both carriers said they would continue to maintain their CDMA EV-DO networks, running both 3G technologies side by side, but as HSPA is deployed they counted on taking advantage of UMTS’s larger global scale.

“As the next evolution in our multi-network strategy, this initiative will position Telus to actively participate in the future global LTE ecosystem and leverage economies of scale, offer timely access to handsets, and enhance global roaming relationships and revenues,” Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle said in a statement.

The deal was also significant for the carriers’ two primary vendors, NSN and Huawei, both of which have been trying to increase their market share in North America. For Huawei in particular, the deal is a milestone, marking its first Tier 1 wireless infrastructure win on the continent. NSN meanwhile made its first entry into the Canadian wireless market. Though it has provided DSLAMs to Telus in the past and sells to Canadian cable operators, it hasn’t deployed a single base station in Canada.

Telus and Bell did not specifically indicate that Huawei and NSN would be the companies LTE vendors, but in both cases they will be deploying the vendors’ next-generation all-IP HSPA gear designed to modularly upgrade to LTE. “It’s certainly our plans to be their LTE vendor,” said Sue Spradley, president of NSN North America. “There is clear evolution path moving from HSPA to LTE. HSPA allows them to make to make a nice clean step to 4G.”