TELUS’ HSPA soft-launch on track for September 2nd, full rollout expected in October
Aaaaand we’re back with some more news regarding TELUS’ HSPA soft-launch. We’ve spoken to a few more people who have been able to confirm to us that TELUS is indeed going to be flipping the switch on parts of its HSPA network on September 2nd — though at this point in time we’ve been unable to get confirmation as to which markets this will occur in. All we know for now is that Vancouver will be one of the lucky markets and, if all goes to plan, the majority of the country will be able to bask in the glory of the new network by the end of October. In other TELUS network news, we know a lot of people have been complaining about a sudden uptake in network interuptions. We’ve been told this is to do with the fact that engineers at TELUS have had to reposition a lot of CDMA antennas to make room for the new HSPA equipment. Chalk it up to a case of no pain, no gain, we suppose.
Just to piss off the ones that want to be first. I don’t care.
Is hspa a upgrade on GSM?
2nd! I do care….
3rd.. LMAO I’ll stick to Robbers for now. At least till my contract is up. Besides they’re not in Thunder Bay
HSPA is indeed an evolution of the GSM based wireless technology.
Ding dong CDMA is dead!
@Danger
Not remotely.
CDMA will still be used for voice, while GSM-based HSPA and LTE will be used for data.
I have been waiting so patiently for this, cant wait. Finally the end is near.
Wait so if CDMA is still being used for voice does that mean my iPhone 3G couldn’t run on the network? I was under the impression that once the network launches, an unlocked iPhone 3G could run 3G voice and data but have to fall back to Roger’s 2G network when there is no 3G…
Can anybody clear this up?
@Jonk yes you will be able to use an iPhone 3G on telus once the network is live…. CDMA will be used as there are telus clients that are still on CDMA and will remain for a long time to come.. but the new telus phones will use SIM CARDS… thus… any simcard phone should work…. in theory….
@John
You’re wrong. HSDPA requires UMTS so yes, voice dialing will be possible with a UMTS 3G phone.
Adi
@Jonk
There will be nothing to fall back to.
@Adi
Where did I say that UMTS wouldn’t be a part of it? In all likelihood, if Telus follows Verizon’s model, voice transmission over UMTS will be disabled. The only reason Telus is adding HSPA is to make the upgrade path to LTE easier. They’re keeping their CDMA network for voice, so it is entirely likely that non-CDMA voice transmission will be disabled. (which will require CDMA/HSPA/LTE hybrid phones that will seamlessly hand off between HSPA data and CDMA voice)
Is telus only upgrading to 3g by september 2nd and then later moving up to 4g by 2010?
Full service on HSPA. Including voice.
And who is going to custom manufacture these said phones? No one, the HSPA network WILL support voice and data. Otherwise the whole point of putting the network up for the winter games is not met.
Eat dust Robbers…
HSPA includes UMTS and voice will have to be enabled, because the lack of CDMA/HSPA handsets in the market. Also developing a hybrid handset will probably require a development that will increase the cost of handsets, which eliminates the one of the main purposes of telus going to UMTS/HSPA.
Voice could be disabled but no point on doing so. Would you want to have two handset (one for voice and one for data)
They will deploy HSDPA/HSUPA at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. The voice will be using UMTS. So the devices they sell would be the same as those sold by AT&T and Rogers (and others.) When roaming outside of the TELUS network they will look for HSPA first, at 850, or 1900, or the UMTS frequencies, then fall back to EDGE/GPRS and GSM voice at whatever frequency is available. So there is nothing requiring special handsets.
So.. does this mean that if I get crappy Telus service in a Telus “dead spot” an iPhone 3Gs will revert to Rogers’ EDGE network?
so if i live in Vancouver, then will my unlocked gsm phone (blackberry 8900) work on telus as of sept 2nd?
@CG as soon as Telus makes their sim cards available.
http://gsmworld.com/documents/GSMA_Feb_18_barcelona_-_David_Neale_-_Telus.pdf
This PDF is rather nice… 2nd last page shows the juicy stuff.
3GPP technologies supported
– Network: UMTS (R99), HSDPA (Rel 5), HSUPA (Rel 6), HSPA+ (Rel 7)
TELUS network deployed on 850 & 1900 bands
– Devices: UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+
Network vendors: Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) and Huawei
Saw Telus techs lining up HSPA antenna on tower near my home. Supervisor told me that with luck service should be up in Montreal by mid-september for sure by the end of the month.
i doubt you are right on this…CDMA and GSM/UMTS/HSPA are totally 2 different techs….they have no way to switchover or handover to and from….if you have a umts phone both voice/data will use the umts switch…if you have a cdma/evdo phone…you are on the cdma switch….