Rogers shutting down WiMAX service in March

Canada’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, Rogers Communications, has decided to discontinue its ‘Portable Internet’ WiMAX wireless broadband service on 1 March 2012, to focus on its 3G and 4G cellular mobile broadband networks. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Portable Internet was launched in April 2006 over the Inukshuk Wireless network, a 50/50 joint venture with Bell Canada based on 2500MHz pre-WiMAX technology, which by June 2011 had coverage of 204 towns and cities and approximately 65% of the population. Rogers offers a nomadic (not mobile) broadband service over the network, especially targeting travelling users and those without access to a fixed broadband connection, although it has not revealed how many Portable Internet subscribers there are. Under a scheme sanctioned by the Canadian telecoms regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecoms Commission (CRTC), both Rogers and Bell are converting the usage of their 2500MHz wireless spectrum resources from fixed (including nomadic) to full mobility.