Rogers is First with HSPA+ in North America

Today, Rogers has officially launched its HSPA+ network and is able to claim the bragging rights of being the first in North America.

“Rogers Wireless today announced it has begun the Canada-wide deployment of a 21 Megabits per second (Mbps) high-speed HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Plus) wireless network, following the successful expansion and doubling of speed of its high-speed network to 7.2 Mbps last year. Starting in August, Rogers will progressively increase wireless network download speeds up to 21 Mbps in the Greater Toronto Area, and expand quickly over the coming months to other cities across the country.”

While this is wonderful news for Rogers, as far as marketing is concerned, I have to wonder how much it is needed by consumers. Of course, we ALL want faster everything, including faster wireless internet access but I gotta think that more customers would be pumped about properly priced data rather than fastest in North America. This “successful launch” comes at a cost and on the backs of customers that have no choices in Canada.

Here’s an idea; offer plain old 3G at reasonable rates and charge a premium for HSPA+.

Still, if you are one of those with either Rogers shares or money trees this is certainly good news for you. Like I said, we all want faster wireless.