Rogers has announced it has activated additional AWS-1 LTE spectrum in BC and Alberta, to bring double the speeds for its customers. The spectrum was acquired from Shaw (as part of the Mobilicity deal), and was unused since 2008 until now.
“Today we’re opening more lanes on our wireless superhighway,” said Raj Doshi, Executive Vice President of Wireless Services at Rogers Communications. “Those new lanes will mean faster speeds as we all stream more and more mobile video and connect with friends and family.”
The additional spectrum means customers can connect to the Rogers AWS LTE network and experience double the speeds compared to before. The spectrum is being first launched in Calgary, Edmonton, Medicine Hat, Kelowna, Prince George, Vancouver and other areas, with the rest of the spectrum to go live by mid-2016.
Doshi continued to say “This spectrum is a valuable resource to Canadians and now it is being put to good use, helping people connect with friends and family faster than ever before.”
Shaw said the total proceeds of the AWS spectrum sale to Rogers was $350 million, which includes licenses in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northern Ontario.
Update: Rogers has sent us the specific communities where the AWS-1 network has been activated. They also confirmed it’s available for Fido customers.
Vancouver: Burnaby, New Westminster and Richmond
Edmonton: City of Edmonton, St Albert, Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Leduc, Nisku, Beaumont and Morinville
Calgary: Calgary, Airdrie
Other Alberta: Medicine Hat, Lloydminster, Wetaskiwin, Drayton Valley and Camrose
Other BC: Kelowna
iPhoneinCanada.ca readers are seeing increased speeds, as seen below:
@iPhoneinCanada pic.twitter.com/6XIrRUXJWE
— kyle scheller (@kyle1550) July 22, 2015
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Do Fido customers have access to this ?
I believe they should
what phones can take advantage of this speed?
Late iPhone 5 (AWS) and up.
All iPhone 5’s have band 4 (AWS) LTE, the AWS “model” is only for HSPA (Wind, T-Mo, etc)
As for taking full advantage of the new speed, it is only the iPhone 6/6+ (with its CAT 4 modem) that can get the full 150Mbps (20×20 channel)
the iPhone 5 and 5S only has a CAT 3 modem which is only capable of 100Mbps. I have a 5S running on Belus network of 15×15 band 4 and have maxed out my speed at 76Mbps in the middle of the night.
I’m still waiting for LTE on 700 mhz in Edmonton so I can get a good connection at my office building! Since they don’t have wifi open to none work devices 🙁
Kind of jealous but not really as it is Rogers after all. Rogers can be the first 300Mbps carrier in Canada now in certain cities. Band 4+ Band 7 if one has the right phone when Rogers turns on that configuration of CA
There’s nothing like burning through your monthly data twice as fast!!
How would you burn through data twice as fast? It just loads content faster, doesn’t take extra data.
You’d have to stream twice as many videos as normal to use twice as much more data 😉
This is a common misconception it seems.
This site is redirecting me to the App Store again, it was good for the last week or so and now it’s back ????
Can you email screenshots of the forwarding URL to gary AT iphoneincanada.ca? Thanks
Next time it happens I will, thanks Gary
Me too. It a pages pops up from adtracker.net or something, then pushes me to the App Store. It seems to happen more frequently when I’m trying to type a comment use safari on my iPhone on this website.
Apparently this is something that’s going to be fixed in iOS 9 if I remember the keynotes correctly.
I only get 38mbps in Calgary?