How do you like Wind? - Shaw Purchases Wind

[Hack&Lube]

GF is on Wind and I want to surprise her with a new phone but she has about 8 months left on her term. Is there an early upgrade option with Wind? I'm going to the store to ask later tonight but I figured I'd ask here as well.

[Finger Cookin]

The WindTAB on the existing phone will need to be paid off (assuming she got the existing phone from WIND). Then you can upgrade to any phone you want. If the existing phone was a phone she brought to WIND, you should be able to upgrade at any time.

[Canehdianman]

Just wanted to leave some feedback, as I recently switched to koodo (using the $55 koodo plan trick on this forum) from Wind.

I never really knew how slow and crappy the internet was with Wind until I switched to someone with a better spectrum and LTE. With Wind, my phone could never get data once I was in a concrete building. With Koodo, I get 2-3 bars of LTE inside the middle of my office building.

Wind was ok for what I needed at the time. But losing data and free SMS/MMS as soon as I get close to the city limits finally annoyed me enough to leave.

Once I did, I was so glad I switched.

[MrMastodonFarm]

http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/01/29/wi...0mhz-auctions/

As if we needed any more confirmation of WIND’s intentions to stay put, ante up and become the fourth national carrier, now we have it. The company issued a release today committing to spending in the upcoming AWS-3 and 2,500Mhz spectrum auctions.

Anthony Lacavera, WIND’s Chairman, who until now has only hinted at the company’s participating, said, “Our participation in the upcoming AWS-3 and 2500MHz auctions reaffirms our long-standing commitment to build a competitive wireless industry in Canada.”

Industry Canada has set aside 30Mhz of spectrum for new entrants such as WIND Mobile — that is, anyone with under 10% market share nationally, and 20% in a specific region — that cannot be bid on by the bigger carriers. This leaves WIND and Mobilicity the only two carriers eligible to bid on AWS-3 spectrum in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia

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[To Be Quite Honest]

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/01/29/wi...0mhz-auctions/
.

Hopefully they still have money left over for the 600MHz auction. As much as the AWS-3 spectrum will help, it will be the 600Mhz spectrum that will push Wind to become a truely competitive fourth carrier.

AWS-3 will have the same issues Wind's current bandwidth has... high attenuation at distance and behind concrete. LTE will be super nice though.

[Azure]

2500mhz will be even worse than what they have now, no?

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Azure

2500mhz will be even worse than what they have now, no?

Not sure about that but I know the more spectrum one has, the better. The thought is they could repurpose a chunk of this for LTE.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Azure

2500mhz will be even worse than what they have now, no?

Yes, it will be worse for signal strength and attenuation so they'll need to put up more towers to maintain the amount same amount of bandwidth over distance or live with shiettier signal strength. Neither of which is good for the company nor consumers.

More bandwidth is good, but some bandwidth is better than others with it being lower cost and what not. At the very least we'll have LTE, but not at a good range.

[Azure]

I love Wind, but they will never get 700mhz LTE unless they sign a roaming agreement. Waiting for 600mhz spectrum is going to take a long time.

IMO, they should try to do something like Google is rumored to be doing. Setup a network where you can use Wifi as a 'cell' signal. They already have roaming agreements with major carriers in all areas of Canada, so set something up where you can quickly switch between the Wind network, Wifi, and the roaming network.

[billybob123]

I love Wind but the last few weeks have been borderline unusable data. My down speeds have been in the 800 kbps range and up around 10 kbps. Useless. And then today, I had no data for the 20 min I was waiting outside for my kid's bus (5 bars reception, though). I'm hopeful it's just my phone. Anyone else notice anything else similar? I'm in the near NW (Foothills hospital area)

[Yellefan]

Originally Posted by billybob123

I love Wind but the last few weeks have been borderline unusable data. My down speeds have been in the 800 kbps range and up around 10 kbps. Useless. And then today, I had no data for the 20 min I was waiting outside for my kid's bus (5 bars reception, though). I'm hopeful it's just my phone. Anyone else notice anything else similar? I'm in the near NW (Foothills hospital area)

I finally had enough and made the switch to another provider today. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse it did. Sorry Wind, I really wanted to like you, but you let me down too many times.

[ken0042]

Yep, my son has pretty much given up trying to use cellular data. And any time we call him at least part of the conversation comes back garbled. We will probably make the move over to Koodo pretty soon.

[Canehdianman]

Seriously. Koodo is 10x better then Wind was. If you are annoyed by the slow speeds and small coverage, get the $55 SK/MB plan from Koodo.

You won't be disappointed.

[Erick Estrada]

So Wind still has a lot of work to do I see. Shame because I really want a good excuse to bail on Rogers.

[MrCallahan]

Originally Posted by Canehdianman

Seriously. Koodo is 10x better then Wind was. If you are annoyed by the slow speeds and small coverage, get the $55 SK/MB plan from Koodo.

You won't be disappointed.

If only they had unlimited calling to the US as well, then I'd be all over that. Use my phone for work, and it's pretty common to have to make calls to the US, so this feature is a must for me! I'll sacrifice the occasional issues with data to save a massive amount on long distance calls to the US, and with the US roaming too.

[FlameOn]

If I wasn't doing the whole "Big 3 are not getting another dollar of my money" thing I'd have switched from Wind, but since I am I'll have to stick with the hoping the spectrum improves things.

Just had enough of Robellus YoY record profits and my bills going up all the time... Koodo plan does sound good though.

[Bean]

Looking to bail from Fido/Rogers network due to reception limitations at work and at home.

For the folks that are on Wind, has their service improved since the last round of reviews and spectrum auctions?

[RW99]

Originally Posted by Bean

Looking to bail from Fido/Rogers network due to reception limitations at work and at home.

For the folks that are on Wind, has their service improved since the last round of reviews and spectrum auctions?

If you are looking to drop Rogers for receptions issues, I doubt Wind will be the way to go. Bell seems to have coverage where Rogers doesnt.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Bean

Looking to bail from Fido/Rogers network due to reception limitations at work and at home.

For the folks that are on Wind, has their service improved since the last round of reviews and spectrum auctions?

Wind hasn't really deployed their new AWS-1 network yet (as they just got that from Rogers a month ago) and LTE is still a bit away. The AWS-3 (LTE) spectrum isn't going up yet as no phones currently support that band AFAIK. Look for those to be release later this year Oct-Dec. So it's kind of status quo from last year. I've seen no improvement or decrease in service quality.

The big thing to look for this year is whether Wind goes for a merger/partnership deal with Videotron or they go for the 600Mhz auction and early/mid next year. Those will be the biggest and best reception increases for Wind and likely the ones that will put them on par or better than incumbents based on the characteristics of the spectrum itself. Deployment of towers and how their network looks like for coverage after is a different story. If it's 700Mhz, expect the upcoming batch of late year phones to support it. If it's 600Mhz, don't expect phones to support it till late next year or early 2017 as the band divisions haven't really been defined yet.

US spectrum auction for 600Mhz is early 2016. We'll probably be late/mid 2016 as we lag a bit behind them.
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/...016/2014-10-24