After Vancouver improvements, Wind Mobile looks to Calgary next for speed and capacity developments

Wind Mobile has completed network upgrades in Vancouver, bringing the western portion of its 3G network in line with the performance customers have been enjoying in Southern Ontario for up to three years now.

Last summer, when Rogers entered into a complicated agreement to purchase Mobilicity, one of Industry Canada’s stipulations for allowing the sale was the divestment of some AWS-1 spectrum to Wind Mobile, which would prevent “undue concentration” Canada’s regulators have vowed to enforce.

Wind picked up an extra 10Mhz in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of Northern and Eastern Ontario. It then sold the Manitoba and Saskatchewan airwaves to their regional incumbents, MTS and SaskTel, and vowed to plow ahead with upgrading its network in the remaining territories with new equipment in higher concentrations.

Now, Wind Mobile says that it has finished those promised upgrades in Vancouver, which began in earnest late last year. CEO Alek Krstajic said in a statement to MobileSyrup that “we are already hearing from customers that they are experiencing a noticeable improvement in their service,” noting that once it has completed the appropriate improvements to its 3G network it will, with parent company Shaw’s help, build an LTE network with the 30Mhz of AWS-3 it acquired last year. The next step, however, is Calgary, which will receive “similar enhancements” to that of Vancouver.