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TELUS is continuing to invest and create more jobs for us Canadians. This time in Ontario reaping the benefits with a massive $300 million investment for High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) and set the stage for a smooth transition to LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology. Apart from the money aspect, this will create over 900 jobs.

Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of TELUS said “Our 7,200 Ontario-based team members are proud of TELUS’ legacy in this province and despite the challenging times we are committed to making significant investments that benefit the economy, our communities, and our customers. Our investment of more than $300 million in leading broadband technology creates employment opportunities, contributes to the province’s future competitiveness, and supports the launch of innovative new services for TELUS customers.”

As Twitters popularity continues Rogers and Fido have announced that their customers can join the rest of the world and send and receive Tweets by Short Code 21212. In addition, they will have the ability to follow new people and reply to their updates.

Good news is that this will be no additional cost for those who are on a text messaging plans, however, messages outside of a plan or customers who do not have a text message plan will be charged $0.15 cents each.

John Boynton, SVP & CMO of Rogers said “Rogers was first to enable Twitter through a wireless browser and we’re excited to now provide Twitter by SMS as well.”

Sylvain Roy, Fido SVP & General Manager said “With more than one million Fido subscribers across Canada, it is important that we continue to save money for our customers with value like Twitter SMS text messaging on their mobile phones. We will continue to support and strengthen our relationship with Twitter in the future, to bring the latest mobile services to our customers.”

To get you all inspired to get going on your Tweets, watch Ashton Kutcher pass the celebrated 1,000,000 followers mark:

More here

Our latest contest paid tribute to all the mothers out there… we decided to honour them by giving away a sexy Nokia E71.

This is currently the slimmest Smartphone available with overall dimensions of 114 x 57 x 10 mm with a weight of 127 grams. This has dual e-mail options for corporate and personal use, built in GPS, WiFi, a 3.2 megapixel camera and can handle another 8GB of expandable memory.

As we said when we announced this contest “Nothing screams like you love you mother like a stunning piece of technology.”… We are proud to announce that Angela McNoughton has won this years giveaway!

In addition to the E71 (so she or her mother will fully enjoy the day) we are sending along a dozen roses and a box of chocolates! Thanks to all who entered their names… stay tuned this afternoon for another contest announcement!

This one goes out to all the Mike customers! A follow up to the recently launch BlackBerry Curve 8350i, Mike will launch the Motorola i465.

It looks really good! In the States was just announced and is called the “Clutch”. This Push-to-Talk device is Motorola’s first iDen device with a full QWERTY keyboard. Overall weight is 96 grams with dimensions of 2.1” x 4.4” x 0.6 inches. It comes with a 1.79” display (128×160 pixels), VGA camera (4x zoom) with video capabilities, Bluetooth, threaded SMS and MMS and POP3 email support.

No info on pricing yet or launch dates, but the image of the inventory shows it’s on route. More soon!

Thanks Alphonse101!

Not sure if this is a listening to the customer or just a sign of the times. People are spending less these days and I guess Speak Out wants to join the party by “listening” to their customers needs.

They created a $15 Airtime card that, as they put it, “Not every SpeakOut customer wants to buy more minutes up front and have a full year to use them. Some customers would rather spend small and talk fast”. So their new $15 card gives you 60 mintes ($0.25 per minute) and expires in 30 days.

Ever since the Ontario Government dropped the hammer on the ban of wireless use while driving, the onslought of discounts for wireless Bluetooth accessories is upon us… better be safe than get hit with a big ticket!

Sony Ericsson has stepped up and offered up to a $25 rebate on select accessories. This mail in rebate is good between May 1st and June 30th. Here is the full list with the associated discount:

Microsoft has joined the party of recent influx of Canadian cellphone contest. Their is called “Mobile Moments” and if you win you could walk away with a cool $10,000.

The contest is on until June 13th, 2009 and all you have to do to enter is upload up to three photos (your “mobile moment”) with a short description of how your mobile device makes a difference in your life.

Votes are tallied up and the top 25 “Mobile Moments” will be judged and the winner will be 10k richer. A secondary prize is available: one Samsung OMNIA or one Xbox 360 Elite and two games (Halo 3 and Mass Effect).

Now that Earth Month is officially over, Bell announced that keep the green theme coming as they are the first Canadian telecommunications company to be ISO 14001. To It does not mean alot but according to the environmental industry this is the international standard “for controlling and improving an organization’s environmental performance”.

Stéphane Boisvert, President of Bell Enterprise Group said “As Canada’s largest communications company, we are acutely aware that what we do today will affect future generations. “We work hard to make our environmental footprint as small as possible and strive to continually improve our environmental performance in every facet of our operations.”

Highlights of why Bell recieved this certification are: More than 625,000 mobile phones have been recovered since 2003 in the Bell Blue Box program; More than 1.7 million Bell customers have adopted e-billing, Employees and customers held more than three million teleconferences in 2008, saving greenhouse gas emissions equal to 180,000 mid-size cars annually and their 3 main offices were built according to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) classification standards for ecological buildings.

More here

Fido just came off the very exciting green launch of the Motorola W233 Renew, and it seems they are following up with the slider Sony Ericsson T303.

We new this would be coming to Fido a couple months ago and looks like the day has arrived. You can now purchase this from your local Fido or on their site. The price plans will be as follows: $15 on a 2-year and $100 Outright or Prepaid.

The Sony Ericsson T303 is a slider that has a 1.3 megapixel camera (4 times zoom), FM radio, Bluetooth, Screen size of 1.8inches with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. Overall dimensions of the T303 are 83mm x 47mm x 14.7mm and weighs in at 93 grams. Plus comes with all the standard phone features theses days such as contacts, calendar, speakerphone etc…

We will get our review of this online shortly.

More here at Fido

At the WES (Wireless Enterprise Symposium) in Orlando, Florida, HP announced “CloudPrint” for BlackBerry smartphones. HP CloudPrint allows users to print emails, documents, photos and web pages from the closest by using an Internet connection.

No need to be chained to the office printer anymore!