Eastlink timeline?

[dajs]

Would anyone here know what Eastlink's time-to-market is? When will they start their wireless service in Atlantic Canada and where (I assume Halifax first?)?

They are still looking to fill a number of important positions as we speak:

"CS Core Network Planner Engineer - Wireless" It is not really clear to me why they would build a new CS core network in 2011 instead of an all IP approach.
Link

Cheaper? Too much legacy stuff around?

Other job examples:

Permitting and Zoning Administrative Coordinator - Wireless
Link
And I thought they were already busy rolling out the network...

Radio Network Engineers
Link

Wireless Roaming Technical Expert
Link

Wireless Site Planner
Lin k

Several VAS positions, a Director of Wireless Marketing, etc.
EastLink Jobs Page

Sounds like it is a long way to go. If they don't even have the staff to plan their sites yet...

[philcloh2o]

Wirelessly posted (Nokia E71-2: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

They are mailing out letters to people now for possible tower locations.

[dajs]

I see, TNX for the info. So we should maybe not expect a start in 2011 but rather in 2012.

That way they might be a little late to the party, eh? I don't see them starting with LTE right away...

Something else that puzzles me is that they seem to be building the network inhouse.

Huawei and ZTE are hungry for business, I'm sure they would have made a nice offer for constructing and operating the network. Together with very cheap funding from Chinese banks. :-)

3 Austria has signed a very interesting deal down that route.

[dajs]

Would anyone have an update on Eastlink?

[dajs]

I have found their signal broadcasted in Halifax. When I try to connect I do not get the expected "access denied", but instead my phone says "no carrier found" for a moment and then reboots. It is a Nokia N8 and this is repeatable. :-)

[Grashoper]

do u know what freq. your phone found the carrier on?

[dajs]

do u know what freq. your phone found the carrier on?

No, I don't. The network code shown was 302 270.

BTW, in their flagship store I was told that the network start is now scheduled for "summer", so it has been delayed again.

[dajs]

I quaeritated the friendly staff at the Eastlink flagship store again this week. They are currently rebuilding an area of the (relatively new) store in preparation for the wireless launch.

However, the launch seems to have been pushed back further. He said it is not clear when they will actually launch, but it will probably be August or September and it sounded more like September.

BTW: The network is now shown as "CAN 270" on my phone. When I try to connect, it takes a while and then says "no network operator found" followed by a reboot of the phone.

[dajs]

There is another network code in Halifax for a while now: 302 610

The 302 270 was gone for a while but has now returned. Which of them is Eastlink, would anyone here know?