BCE, Canada's biggest telecom company, and Telus, the country's No. 2 phone firm, will share the cost of a next-generation wireless network upgrade, a Reuters report said.
The Reuters report, further quoting the Financial Post newspaper, said BCE and Telus are expected to announce next week an upgrade to high speed packet access networks, estimated to cost as much as C$1 billion ($1.05 billion).
That will allow them to support such mobile devices as Apple's popular iPhone 3G, launched this summer by Rogers Communications, a telecoms and media group that owns Canada's biggest wireless carrier, the Reuters report said.
The upgrade, from the carriers' current code division multiple access networks, could take about one year to install.
Nokia Siemens Networks is said to be the vendor for the upgrade, the report said.
Representatives from BCE's Bell Canada phone unit and Telus declined to comment on a unified network upgrade.