On 2023-08-02 09:57, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

Also, Videotron is a regional company, which has to roam on another carrier outside their areas. Acquiring will only slightly improve that.

I don't grok that. Freedom has a national network of towers (including the closest one to my home) and has agreements with other carriers outside their area.

Isn't that what I said when I mentioned roaming on another carrier? Freedom may have towers in various cities across the country, but how much overall coverage to they have? Rogers is the only company that is actually coast to coast, but even they don't have full coverage. For many years, Bell and Telus have roamed on each other's networks for years, even though they both have towers in some areas.

You may recall, back in the 90s, when 2G was starting up. There were new networks, such as Microcell (parent of Fido) and Clearnet. They would have towers in the major centres, but roamed on other carriers elsewhere. Fido, for example roamed on Rogers. They also had to use a "backpack" between the phone and battery, to access the Rogers analog network, as their GSM phones wouldn't work on the Rogers IS-136 digital network. So, roaming on other carriers has long been a "tradition" in Canada. 😉 There were also several virtual carriers that relied entirely on other carriers. Sears is one that comes to mind, along with Petro Canada and 7 11. Many of them used the Microcell network, which meant they had to move to Rogers or Bell/Telus when away from the Microcell network.

I don't know what's happening with Freedom on the subway, between being bought by Videotron and Rogers taking over the BAI network, but all carriers will have 911 access, as required by law.