WIND Mobile Joins the Party... Now What?

The launch of Globalive’s WIND Mobile in Toronto last week had people cheering en masse that a fresh competitor was on the scene to blow away the competition. No contracts and a great deal on data access is enough to get anyone talking… er, texting, surfing, etc. As much as I want to jump on the bandwagon, a few things stuck out like a bevy of sore thumbs that have me taking a ‘wait and see’ attitude at best. So let’s take a look under the hood of this new player in the market and why I’m not sold… yet.

- No contracts. At all.

WIND touts the now age-old selling point of no contracts. Normally this means a company is pushing pay-as-you-go as their main hook while still offering long term plans, but WIND means it. They don’t offer contracts of any kind. As much as I want to see WIND thrive in a market currently dominated by The Big Three, offering no contracts whatsoever tells me someone wearing a suit isn’t exactly confident WIND will be around long enough to honour multi-year deals.

- You MUST buy your phone.

The main idea behind offering long term contracts is so you don’t have to pay full price for your phone. Aside from my geek friends who buy theirs from the manufacturer directly, most people prefer to pay a highly subsidized rate for their device on a contract, often getting their phone for $0. While the Blackberry Bold 9700 from WIND costs $450 compared to the $600 no-plan version from Rogers, this becomes a moot point when, generally, people don’t want to buy their phone anyway.

- The network

In order to break into the market, WIND leased lines on the AWS network, a frequency that only one other provider in North America uses – T-Mobile. It’s cheaper than attempting to get chunks of the GSM spectrum currently controlled by Rogers et al, but it means if you travel outside your ‘Home’ network, you’ll be signing on to Rogers’ GSM and paying some pretty hefty roaming charges to the tune of 25 cents per minute - for anyone who travels outside the GTA this is a huge turnoff. A slew of devices aren’t setup for AWS, which is a major reason WIND currently offers only 4 phones to choose from. According to WIND’s FAQ, SIM cards are on the way so you’ll be able to bring over your existing handset and avoid buying a brand new one, but it needs to ‘qualify’ first – i.e. it must support AWS - so you can forget about popping it into your iPhone.

So What’s Good?

With so few hardware options on the table and no ability to subsidize your phone purchase, WINDs chances of thriving in an already saturated market will be a tough sell. Despite my cynical perspective there is a bright spot to all this: Data access. 55 bucks gets you unlimited internet access without the possibility of being charged extra – so long as you stay inside the Home network, of course. Rogers/Fido, Telus, and Bell could take a lesson here as they all tack on per-Megabyte, metered charges to their already limited data plans, squeezing every last penny out of your mobile surfing experience. The downside is a gigantic 10 cents per 25 kilobyte charge for leaving WIND’s limited coverage area.

Passing WIND?

With marketing geared toward providing great customer support(much like T-Mobile down South), WIND wants to bring sweeping changes to how you’re being treated as a customer. I’m all for it, but first they desperately need to widen their coverage areas and expand their inventory into at least the double digits. In something of a catch-22 this is all dependent on how well they’re accepted in their current form. In 2010 Apple plans on releasing an AWS-compatible iPhone for T-Mobile users. Hopefully by that time WIND hasn’t been swept away by big-money competition.