Halifax-based Eastlink is well-known in Canada for their bundled cable television and telecom services, but they are also a wireless service provider. Certainly not to the scales of Rogers, Bell, or Telus, but their service costs are roughly 25 to 50-percent cheaper than the Big Three. Eastlink is a privately held company owned by the Bragg family and launched its first Canadian wireless service in 2013 to provide competitive and affordable rates. The carrier brags that they are the only 100-percent LTE mobile network in Canada – they may not be as large, but they are all LTE. Eastlink currently covers most of Nova Scotia and PEI, but they plan to expand their LTE network in Ontario in the coming weeks.
Eastlink plans use the upper C1 spectrum that the Bragg family purchased during the 700MHz auction in 2014. The spectrum is located in Maritimes and Northern Ontario and those in Timmins can expect LTE service to start June 1 and Sudbury area can expect their wireless service on June 9. The LTE service will launch in the heart of both cities and gradually work its way out to surrounding areas. Once you step out of Eastlink’s coverage, you will be roaming on Telus, Bell or Rogers’ network. There will be an Eastlink retail store in the Timmins Square and the New Sudbury Centre. No pricing or plan details are out at this time.
Eastlink keeps a low profile as the Big Three battle it out for your services, but last year they did offer a promo for $200 if you ported your number over to them and activated a new account. It is possible, once Eastlink starts up their new services, they may offer an incentive to join their ranks, but nothing has been leaked so far. As small as Eastlink is, they do offer some upper-end smartphones to choose from – such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy Note 5, and LG G5. They have many different plans to choose from – Data Plus Plans if you use a lot of data with plans going up to 10GB for $115 per month, and the plan allows you to have five smartphones sharing this data bucket. They also have a Data Lite Plan for those that talk and text more than they use data, starting at $40 per month for 500MB of data, $50 a month for 1GB of data and $60 per month for 2GB of data.