Canadians have been looking at US 5G rollouts with jealousy, but today Samsung gives them a bit of hope, proclaiming that Videotron will launch its 5G network in 2020 using Samsung networking equipment.

"Videotron plans to launch commercial LTE-A and 5G services in late 2020. Starting in early 2020, Samsung will deliver 4G LTE-A solutions across Quebec and Ottawa in which the solutions from Samsung include Massive MIMOs and Dualband base stations, supporting the operator's 4G LTE frequencies, and 5G solutions for both 3.5GHz and 28GHz spectrums will be provided as well," Samsung Electronics said in a press release.

Videotron is Canada's fifth-largest wireless carrier, with more than 1.2 million subscribers in Quebec and Ontario. Canada has three nationwide carriers—Bell, Rogers and Telus—as well as several regional carriers. The three major carriers have said at various times that they expect to launch some 5G services by the end of 2020.

"Videotron has always been at the forefront of major technological changes and the arrival of 5G is no exception. Today's announcement is a very proud moment for us," Jean François Pruneau, president and chief executive officer of Videotron said in the release.

Canada is behind the US and Europe when it comes to auctioning off 5G-suitable airwaves. Canadians shouldn't be too stressed about that. Canada's 4G networks perform vastly better than US 4G networks, as our Fastest Mobile Networks Canada study showed. 5G launches in 2019 have been a bit of a mess. Canadian carriers are too small to demand custom handsets the way Verizon can. (The largest Canadian carrier, Rogers, has about 11 million subscribers; the smallest US carrier, Sprint, has 54 million.)

All in all, waiting until things sort themselves out in 2020 will mean Canadian carriers will have lower buildout expenses and cheaper, more widely available handsets than the US carriers which have been on the cutting edge of 5G rollouts.

I'd like to make it clear that this is an announcement from Samsung's networking arm, not the Samsung handset group, although Samsung's mobile phones will almost certainly support whatever 5G setup Canadian carriers decide to use.

5G Is Coming Next Year

Earlier this year, Videotron bought ten 600MHz licenses, which carriers expect to use for low-band, low-speed 5G in 2020. Rogers, which Videotron has previously partnered with on 4G projects, also bought a lot of 600MHz spectrum.

But the real hope for 5G in Canada comes with the 3.5GHz auction, which is for metro-area frequencies that are popular in Europe. According to the government, that auction is currently scheduled to run in 2020, although a hard date hasn't been set yet. Samsung's announcement appears to confirm that Videotron will be bidding in that auction and that it will implement 5G very quickly on any spectrum it wins.

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