[gabbo]

A few things to add though you painted a pretty good picture:

- Shaw is the cable monopoly in the west. Shaw used to have a presence in Ontario but they did a big asset swap about 10 years ago.

- A few areas have different cable monopolies but they're vastly smaller than Rogers/Shaw. Cogeco and Videotron, I think.

- Beyond Rogers (who bought Microcell a.k.a. Fido) and the smaller players, Bell and Telus actually teamed up and built their own GSM network. I think it went live shortly before the 2010 olympics.

- As far as I know Bell and Telus both operate their own CDMA networks across Canada. In Ontario, at least, you've been able to get CDMA service from both for a long long time.

[pyre]

- I was under the impression that Bell owned Telus or something similar.

- I heard about the GSM network, but IIRC there is some sort of transition period going on right now. Also, I've heard varying reports about it. I wasn't sure if they actually had a GSM network or if people were talking about them not using CDMA for 3G internet.

[gabbo]

Today's Telus came out of a merger a long time ago between the old Telus and Clearnet. There hasn't been any merger yet, but oddly there are articles floating around speculating that there will be one in the not-too-distant future. Great, just what Canada needs: less choice in telecoms.

Re: the GSM network, I thought it was kind of ridiculous at first for the two carriers to build an entirely new 3G network when their CDMA works just fine. The speculation I heard was (1) they wanted to sell the iPhone (2) roaming revenue for the 2010 Olympics. Neither seemed like enough reason for such huge expense though. I can't find much solid information but I'm willing to bet you're right and their GSM network is available in a few places nationwide.