Calgary is outpacing Vancouver as Western Canada’s hub for wireless communications and is poised to challenge Ottawa’s lead within five years, industry players, researchers and analysts say.
Calgary’s strong base in wireless, the city’s expanding community of high-tech workers and its diversity in wireless research and development will spur continued growth, the experts say.
Over the next five years, they add, the city’s winning edge will emerge as massive provincial government investment in wireless R&D and information technologies education starts to pay off. Add to that investment low taxes, lifestyle and other benefits of the “Alberta advantage.”
“Calgary’s definitely becoming a known player in the wireless area,” says Carey Williamson, one of three recently appointed iCORE chairs in wireless at the University of Calgary.
The Alberta government provides $10 million per year to iCORE (Informatics Circle of Research Excellence) to attract to the province some of the world’s top computer science, engineering, physics and mathematics researchers and educators.
Williamson, 37, is a leading researcher in Internet protocols and computer network performance. When he arrives in Calgary from the University of Saskatchewan in July, he’ll start building a state-of-the-art laboratory and a team to develop wireless Internet applications.
Charles Reichert, director of Infoport, a division of Calgary Technologies Inc., says Ottawa is still ahead in overall high-tech strength. “But in its own right, Calgary is considered the wireless development centre in Canada.”
The city’s technology workforce of more than 60,000 is now greater than all of British Columbia combined, Reichert notes.
Vancouver remains strong in the wireless sector, he adds. “But it has lost out to Calgary in many ways.”
Dean Kim, technology analyst at Acumen Capital Finance Partners Ltd. in Calgary, says: “If you were to look at the number of people that have specific skill sets in developing wireless intellectual property, then I think Calgary is second-to-none.”
Alberta has more than 100 companies working in various segments of wireless R&D and commercial applications, says Mel Wong, executive director of research and technology commercialization for Alberta Innovation and Science.
Major players in Calgary include Telus Mobility, one of the world’s largest wireless communications carriers. The city is also home to the global wireless research and manufacturing centres for giant Nortel Networks Corp.
“Calgary has developed a significant base of research and development for wireless,” Wong says. “That then allows it to spin off more (value) in terms of industrial applications.”
On the consumer side, 30 per cent of Albertans now have wireless devices and 98 per cent have access to a wireless signal, Wong says. “So in terms of wireless and Internet penetration, we are leading basically in usage of those kinds of things.”
Innovation and Science Minister Lorne Taylor says the provincial government, with advice from a blue-ribbon panel that includes Nortel chief executive John Roth and Sun Microsystems Inc. vice-president James Gosling, has put wireless at the core of the province’s IT strategy.
The government aims to increase the value of Alberta’s high-tech sector to $30 billion by 2010, from its current $8 billion. Alberta is a relatively small community with fewer research-intensive universities compared with more populous provinces and U.S. states, Taylor says. “We’ve got to focus on some specific areas and be the best in the world. In IT, wireless is one of those areas.”
Charles Brown, vice-president of sales and marketing for WaveRider Communications Inc., a Calgary-based global high-speed wireless Internet provider, has worked in the wireless industry since 1984. He believes “Calgary has an edge” over Vancouver, especially in wireless design, SCADA (long-distance wireless data transmission from remote sites) and Global Positioning Systems or GPS.
Brown says local companies that pioneered early wireless applications, such as Novatel and Harris Canada Inc. (whose wireless access division is in Calgary) helped lay a strong foundation for an industry that’s thriving despite the slowing economy.
Pete Garrett, vice-president of wireless access development for Nortel Networks in Calgary, has worked for Nortel in the city for nearly 21 years. The company’s local wireless research and manufacturing operations have grown six-fold, to about 2,000 employees, since being established nine years ago, he says. Nortel’s overall operation in Ottawa is still larger, but it’s also 25 years old.
When it comes to wireless R&D, Nortel’s Calgary laboratory is “a peer lab with Ottawa, with Paris and with various other labs around the world,” Garrett says. “We are one of the major Nortel sites for wireless Internet around the world.”
Jim Cavers, professor of engineering science at Simon Fraser University in B.C., says he prefers to see Calgary’s growing clout in wireless not as competition with Vancouver, but as something that’s good for western Canada. “It certainly doesn’t take away from us out here. It just adds to the number of people we can (collaborate with),” he says.
Still, Alberta offers unparalleled government support for university R&D, which helps nurture and grow the wireless industry, Cavers acknowledges. “We (in B.C.) don’t have the equivalent of iCORE and I don’t think we’re ever going to see it.”
Alberta’s first iCORE chair lured Norman Beaulieu, a top scientist in wireless communications, to the University of Alberta from Queen’s University last September. If iCORE hadn’t existed, “I would have gone to the States,” Beaulieu says.
Industry players and analysts point to other signs that Calgary is pulling ahead in wireless R&D, not just in Canada but in North America.
Panasonic decided to build its $13-million wireless design centre here, after scouting the continent for the best location for its second North American research centre.
Calgary won on a number of points, says Mike Wuerstl, Panasonic’s operations director in the city. They included a sizable skilled workforce, a thriving wireless sector and high-tech industry, and several excellent educational institutions. Other pluses were the low Canadian dollar and Calgary’s relatively low cost of living, especially compared with places like California’s Silicon Valley.
Panasonic’s 76,000-sq.-ft. centre, to open in June, will house 150 engineers and 25 support staff. They’ll develop the linking software in third-generation handheld devices that combine cellphone capability with Internet, e-mail and other converging wireless applications.
Panasonic is joining marquee tech players such as Intel Corp., Rogers AT&T Wireless, Sanmina Canada ULC and others in what’s called “Telecom Triangle” in northeast Calgary. The city’s extended wireless community includes companies such as Wi-Lan, Cell-Loc, CSI Wireless and numerous wireless engineering and contract manufacturing firms.
Byron Osing, chief executive of Launchworks Inc. in Calgary, says in terms of wireless-related financing, there is still a higher volume of deals generated in Ottawa and Vancouver compared with Calgary. That’s mainly due to more venture capital being available in the other two cities.
“But the plays coming out of Calgary are typically more significant,” Osing adds. “They tend to be deeper IPOs (initial public offerings) or more infrastructure-related bigger plays.”
In the long run, the comparative scarcity of venture capital and technology commercialization funds in Calgary will be a challenge for the local wireless industry, the experts say.
Still, Calgary has one of the country’s highest rates of Internet-connected businesses and households, Osing notes. Alberta’s $300-million Supernet, a high-speed fibre-optic network to link 420 communities within three years, also will stimulate work in wireless links to the fibre backbone.
When it comes to leading the wireless revolution, Osing says, “I think Calgary’s better positioned than any city in North America.”
