Wireless set to battle cable, phone firms

While cable and telephone companies battle in the trenches in a ground war for broadband subscribers, a new set of rivals is launching a stealth attack from the air.

High-speed wireless Internet access for the residential mass market — a technology that has long been promising the moon but failing to get off the ground — has now hit the airwaves with new services that threaten to change the balance of power in the broadband business.

“What we're doing is a very extensive, very aggressive rollout of what I think is absolutely phenomenal technology,” says Dean Proctor, vice-president of regulatory affairs at Montreal-based Microcell Telecommunications Inc.

It is not the first time that Microcell and its subsidiary Inukshuk Internet Inc. have announced ambitious plans for a wireless network that will rival cable and telephone high-speed Internet services.