I was at The Source store the other day inquiring about unlocked cell phones and the manager told me that they won’t be selling Rogers phones anymore and will switch over to Bell in the new year.
That is interesting. It looks like the market may be shifting to where competition will be mainly between Rogers and Bell (or Telus, depending on location), much like in most of the rest of the country. It will be interesting to see how Citywest fairs under that scenario.
According to Google, their network is working in the Yukon and the NWT right now as well.
Bell’s website says that the HSPA network is active here, if you go to their coverage and travel map.
Is Citywest selling HSPA phones? Or still selling CDMA phones?
By my read of the User Guides linked to Citywest’s “Cell Phones & Smartphones” page, their newest phones - the Palm Pre smartphone, LG Bliss and Samsung Reclaim - are all CDMA phones.
Thanks for the info CD… seems like CityWest has not bothered to make any statements on HSPA so any assumptions are as valid as the next I spose. Again… I’m not holding my breath.
Interesting to see that our municipally owned telco is investing in a new fibre upgrade to Kitimat from Terrace. It’s not clear from their press release whether the total cost is only $2.5 million dollars for the upgrade. Would be interesting to see the business justification to roll this project out at a time when the Kitimat pulp mill’s future is up in the air and the City of Prince Rupert as sole shareholder of Citywest is facing almost a 1 million dollar deficit in 2010.
While I certainly wish and hope well for Kitimat, we are all too familiar with the exodus and pain that Prince Rupert went through with the loss of their mill. Maybe CityWest’s board has devined a brighter near term future for Kitimat?
I switched over to bell and got the i phone 3gs when i was in metrotown, bell is way bigger now! plus they have a faster network then rogers since there upgrade for the olympics.
Bell has better price plans than rogers, it cost me $321 to break my contract but was worth it!
Network coverage in Prince Rupert as per Bell website…
Bell & Telus HSPA is on and working in Prince Rupert, and has been for a while.
I don’t know why Citywest isn’t selling HSPA devices yet (I don’t think - please correct me if I’m wrong). Perhaps they never will, I don’t know.
So if you want an iPhone, a newer Blackberry, or any other HSPA device, you can sign up with Bell or Telus and just ask for a Port Edward number.
anyone click on the link at the bottom for wholesale cell phone sales iphones are cheap 
Sorry to resurrect a dead thread here… couple of comments and a couple of questions.
Comment/ Very likely the reason that Citywest doesn’t have any wording anywhere about 3G networks is because they don’t have the technical capability for it yet, and from a marketing perspective why would you draw attention to the fact that your competitors have a network that is better than yours. No rocket science here. I wouldn’t be surprised if they shortly start marketing their current network as 3G, but its really just 2.5.
Comment/ I was just on the Telus website seeing if I could transfer my rogers number to telus because I want to get rid of my iphone. I entered my 250-600 number and they claim online that they can transfer this number. I’m not sure, but I was under the impression that the 250-600 exchange was Prince Rupert, not Port Edward. Either way, that’s good news! Bottom line, it now means there are 3 valid mobile carriers in town which is good for healthy business competition.
Comment/ Citywest just did an upgrade to their cell network, they are now delivering EV-DO to all those phones that are capable of receiving it. For all the Citywest haters out there, this makes Citywest a faster mobile data provider than Rogers. 
I’m sure it won’t last long though. I haven’t seen any speed tests with my own eyes, but I’ve seen several colleagues’ phones that are now lit up with the EV/DO logo. Not sure what they are delivering in actual bandwidth locally, but up north they claimed it was 2.4Mbit.
Question/ For anyone out there who has a phone on the 3G/+ Bell/Telus network, what phone do you have, and what kind of real speed do you see? Any Android phones out there in use? My sister has a 3gs in Mackenzie and it screams. At Christmas in PG when we met she was getting 1Mbit download speed test in College Heights. Suddenly those 1GB plans aren’t all that big when you aren’t constricted, ahaha.
Cheers,
Tim