HALIFAX – While this morning’s EastLink/Cisco press conference was about mobile video, reporters also had other mobile questions for EastLink CEO Lee Bragg.
His company purchased AWS spectrum in the 2008 auction for Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and despite much hiring and a significant network build, the company has yet to launch a wireless telephony service out east. That will change in the not too distant future, said Bragg. “We’re close to a cellular announcement,” he said. “I’m not in a position to announce it today. It is quite a strategic initiative on our part but we’re very close and we continue to work at getting more sites up.”
So far, he added, EastLink has 150 wireless sites ready to go in Nova Scotia and PEI and that the company has built an HSPA and LTE capable network. The company has previously stated that its goal was to launch wireless in 2012.
“There’s no first to market advantage for us so we’re not in a big panic,” Bragg continued. “We really want to make sure we do this right and we think we have quite a responsibility to our existing customers to make sure that any new products and services that we launch are done well, that we meet the customers’ expectations and everything is seamless from a customer experience point of view.
“Soon, we’ll make an official announcement but I don’t have anything more to say at this stage,” added Bragg.
– Greg O’Brien
