Wind Customers Can Now Roam On Telus, Increases Coverage By 14% [u]

WIND mobile goes live in Kingston

According to a report from MobileSyrup, Wind has added Telus as a roaming partner which will increase their coverage by 14 percent across Canada.

“As a result of WIND’s re-capitalization, CEO change and renewed stability in light of its newfound independence, the company has been advertising itself as a truly national network. It recently launched a $44 Cross-Canada plan that offers unlimited Canada/US talk and global texts, along with unlimited Home data and $10 monthly credits towards roaming.”

In British Columbia, Telus’ home province, the coverage for customers will be increased by 40 percent. As a result of all the changes being made at Wind over the past several months, the company can truly be classified as a national network.

“In September, the CRTC held a consultation to ascertain whether it should regulate domestic roaming rates. New entrants like WIND, Mobility and Eastlink are in favour of the procedure, which would allow them, should the rates be low enough, to run truly “national” networks at prices competitive with the incumbents. Rogers, Bell and TELUS believe that regulating those rates will force them to cut down on investment in rural areas. Regional carriers like SaskTel and MTS are worried that such regulations would cut into their own revenues, as they would be disadvantaged by being forced to offer larger national significantly lower rates to roam on their networks than they do today.”

At one point, Wind was in a roaming partnership with Rogers and offered high cost options at 2G speeds. After Canada’s regulatory body called out Rogers, Wind partnered with Bell, where the offer was a more affordable $25 per 500MB. To put this into perspective, this is the same price that Rogers charges their customers for roaming.

With the announcement of their roaming partnership with Telus, Wind now covers 97 percent of Canada’s population.

Update: WIND has made this news official this morning in a press release:

“Our data shows that Canadians living in our Unlimited coverage areas do tend to travel outside of their home zone for work or pleasure,” said Mirko Rugarli, Chief Marketing Officer, WIND Mobile. “That’s why at WIND, we are dedicated to improving our customers’ experience across Canada and the U.S. – providing them with the freedom to use their phone when they travel. We’ve also been listening to customer feedback and have continued to extend our Unlimited footprint, most recently adding Brantford, with even more aggressive plans for expansion planned for the coming year.”

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