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Rogers offers first satellite mobile service in Canada
Rogers Communications on Tuesday announced the rollout of a new satellite-to-mobile service, the first of its kind in Canada. Rogers Satellite provides voice and video calling and a number of popular apps for weather and navigation information, vastly increasing the company’s coverage.
“This is really an important technology that’s a game changer for our industry,” Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri told National Post in an interview. “We’re really excited about this.”
Canada has decent cell service in its large population centres, although even those feature the odd dead zone. But away from major cities, there can be little to no connectivity.
Meaghan Oosterhoff knew that when she signed up for a beta test of the new service in July. The mother of three young children lives in Brant County, in southern Ontario, but has relatives in northern Manitoba.
“I use it for work and for when I visit home,” she told National Post. “I work in forestry services, and part of that involves going to remote destinations, mostly in the bush. So I use it to keep in contact with my kids while I’m away.”
Her grandmother lives outside the town of Roblin, Man., which is itself 400 kms northwest of Winnipeg. She said the unmarked roads mean getting there is a mix of written instructions and memory, “like turn left at the boulder … that sort of thing.”
She recalled a visit last Christmas in sub-zero temperatures, bringing her youngest child to meet her grandmother for the first time. “Before we go into the dead zone, we have our family chat, and we say, ‘OK, we’re going in. If you don’t hear from us in the next, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, send the search party.’”
She said this Christmas will be less stressful, regardless of the weather.
“I’m not worried at all about my next visit home,” she said. “With WhatsApp for the family chat, and Google Maps — just being able to ping where we’re at and have access to that map instead of the hand-drawn instructions.” She laughs: “I don’t know about you, but my geography skills aren’t the strongest.”
Brian Carriere, another beta-version tester, has a similar story. He’s a forestry worker on Vancouver Island, and said the new service lets him keep in touch with his two teenaged daughters, and also get instant updates from his employer without having to go hunting for a cell signal or a wifi hotspot.
“If my coworker is driving, I can be updating my employer on where we’re at, where we’re going, and receive instantaneous reply while we’re on the move.”
There’s a public safety aspect to the service as well, he added.
“Where I work, on the drive to Tofino, there’s no cell service, and there’s tons of accidents on that road all the time. A lot of situations would have been resolved sooner had somebody been able to call 911 or text 911.”
Oosterhoff echoed that thought. “Last summer during the wildfires, our communities were affected a lot. And just being able to have that peace of mind, like, OK, we can track each other, we know where we are, if there’s any travelling between communities or evacuations or anything like that, it’s nice to know that. Next summer, we’ll have a better track on where we all are.”
During the trial, Rogers calculated that customers sent over a million satellite text messages.
Staffieri noted that T-Mobile in the U.S. launched a similar service for its customers in October.
“T-Mobile is one of those that we’ve been working with,” he said. “They’re a few months ahead of us as a result of satellite preparedness for the U.S. relative to Canada … but we’re closely following, learning from some of the things they’re finding, and making sure that as we go to market and launch this, that we have the best information possible to make this the best experience for Canadians.”
He noted that the new service will give Rogers three times the coverage of any other Canadian wireless provider. Though even at that, there’s room to expand. A map of Rogers’ coverage shows the satellite area blanketing Canada, but only as far north as the 58th parallel, roughly the latitude of Churchill, Man.
“As we expand on our satellite capabilities then it’ll cover the Far North,” Staffierai said. “Those satellites haven’t been launched yet, but … as they come into production, we’ll ensure that we bring it to Canadians as quickly as possible.”
He added that the coverage area also includes vast inland bodies of water like James Bay, as well as the oceans off the east and west coasts. “For the industries that are out there, this is a pretty important technology for those cases as well.”
Even in less remote locations, the new service means customers who might have had calls drop out on the odd dead zone along the 400 or 401 highways won’t lose their signal there.
The new service is included in some Rogers plans and can be added to others for $10 a month, or $15 for non-Rogers customers. The company’s intent is to expand the service next year to support further data and voice services, including 911 voice services across the country.
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