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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Come fall, a partnership between Inuvik-based Ice Wireless and national voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) giant Iristel Inc., plans to be the first NorthwesTel Inc. competitor offering local landline phone service in the North.

NorthwesTel, the incumbent phone company of the North, is currently in the process of preparing its system for the Ice Wireless-Iristel entry, as per a December ruling by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) last December, which ended the company's longtime regulated monopoly as of May 1.

"We're ready to go," said Samer Bishay, president of Ice Wireless and Iristel, in Yellowknife Monday to inspect Ice Wireless facilities.

"Because we're the first competitors in the market from a CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier) perspective, NorthwesTel still does not know what to do with us in a way."

Services including VoIP and wholesale long distance, are targeted to be offered to subscribers in Yellowknife and other Northern communities by September.

"When we launch our home phone service, customers will be able to keep their existing telephone, they'll be able to keep their existing phone number, the only difference that they'll see is a different logo on their phone bill, and their phone bill will be a lot cheaper," said Cameron Zubko, Ice Wireless vice-president of corporate development. "So that's what they're going to see in the home phone market."

A recent application to the CRTC to allow $40 million from a tangible broadcast benefits fund required for NorthwesTel parent company Bell Canada to buy broadcast entity Astral Media to go toward a five-year, $273-million NorthwesTel investment to upgrade Internet and wireless services across the North, is a "last gasp attempt to keep competition and innovation out of the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut," said Bishay.

The partnership proposes that if money from the tangible broadcast benefits fund is approved to go toward upgrades in the North, it should be split between all carriers in the North.

"On the Ice Wireless side, we are aggressively expanding our cellular system across the North," Zubko said, listing new data services to be rolled out, including high-speed 3G data in the coming months. "There are already viable competitors in the North, in all of the areas that NorthwesTel is asking for a subsidy."

Intervenors have until Aug. 9 to submit comments on NorthwesTel's network modernization plan to the CRTC.

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