Microcell will launch its Fido personal communications service Nov. 29 in Montreal, making it the first licensee off the mark with pcs in the 2 GHz bandwidth.
The company was one of four awarded licences by Industry Canada last December to provide wireless digital communications services.
Rogers Cantel also unveiled its Cantel AT&T pcs phone in Montreal this month, but the service it offers is still on its existing 800 MGz digital network. Cantel has not yet decided when it will move to 2 GHz in Montreal.
According to Industry Canada’s guidelines in granting the licences, Cantel and Mobility Canada, which operates as Bell Mobility in Ontario and Quebec, cannot launch their pcs products in a market until one of the two new entrants, Microcell and Clearnet Communications, have done so.
Microcell began teasing Montreal this summer with a dirigible that hovered over the city bearing only the word Fido.
It wasn’t until double-page spreads appeared in newspapers this month that the public realized Fido referred to Microcell’s new digital wireless phone and communications service.
Fido is being launched with a print and television campaign from bos of Montreal. Public relations support is being handled by Opsis Communications & Marketing.
Raynald Petit, Microcell director of marketing communications, says Fido is being targeted as an affordable new technology to both consumer and business markets.
Fido is a wireless communication service that people can use at home, at work, in the car or at the office, anywhere in the Greater Montreal area, for local or long distance calls, says Petit.
The Fido service comes with call waiting, call transfer and a three-way conference service.
Because the palm-sized phone has a screen, other customized services will also be available, including text messaging, voice mail, fax messaging, call display and caller identification.
Petit says these services are only the beginning for Fido because the smart card inside the handset allows for virtually unlimited applications and services.
Microcell is not releasing details of the pricing structure for the phone and service until Nov. 29.
The company is the only one of the four Canadian licensees to choose gsm (Global System for Mobile Communications), adopted as the European pcs standard, as the digital format for its service.
Cantel AT&T is using tdma (Time Division Multiple Access), while Mobility Canada and Cantel have chosen the cdma (Code Division Multiple Access) protocol.
Petit says Microcell decided on gsm because the company felt it was the most efficient and the least expensive system. This allows Microcell to make the service affordable, he says.
One of the three principal objectives stated by Industry Canada in granting pcs licenses was to provide universal access of fully-portable communications systems at a reasonable cost.
