BCE Mobile Communications Inc. said yesterday it was having
serious problems getting phones from a handset supplier. At the
same time, its sister company, Northern Telecom Ltd., announced a
$16-million deal to sell handsets to BCE rival Microcell
Telecommunications Inc.
BCE Mobile, which runs cellular phone service in Quebec and
Ontario, said it has dumped Oki Telecom Inc. as a supplier of
state-of-the-art handsets for its personal communications service
network.
Instead, it signed a $70-million, 18-month contract with Qualcomm
Inc. of San Diego for a multiple access phone. It expects to
launch PCS service in late 1997.
Nortel said it had signed an 18-month deal to supply Microcell, a
private Montreal PCS provider, with its GSM phones.
BCE Mobile and Nortel are owned by Montreal-based
telecommunications conglomerate BCE Inc.,
Microcell plans to sell Nortel's phones as part of its Fido PCS
launch in Toronto this month.
Its PCS service, which is already operating in four cities,
including Montreal, is based on the older GSM standard for
wireless phones while BCE Mobile's system uses the newer CDMA
technology.
The standards are different methods of sending voice and data phone
signals over wires or through the air.
Oki has been plagued by delays, which hurt its delivery dates, BCE
Mobile officials said.
''Oki wasn't making the schedule we needed,'' said Brian
O'Shaughnessy, vice-president of technology planning.
In October, BCE Mobile signed a three-year, $125-million contract
with the U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Oki Electric Co. Ltd.
Oki had promised to supply the cellular company in 1997 with phones
that could handle calls on three different radio bands, a feature
no other phone has at present.
However, its chip supplier failed to deliver components on time,
delaying Oki's phone launch until 1998, said Coby Sillers, senior
vice-president of sales and marketing.
''The problems weren't resident with Oki. But BCE Mobile had to go
forward with its launch and we understood that,'' he said.
BCE Mobile will probably buy phones once they are available,
O'Shaughnessy said.
Qualcomm will join Sony of Canada Ltd. as BCE Mobile's handset
suppliers.
As well, BCE Mobile will probably sign up another couple of
suppliers this year, O'Shaughnessy said. |
