BCE Inc, and Telus are expected to announce that they will be building a new wireless communications network based on the same technology that Rogers is using. This will provide consumers a true alternative to Rogers (and Fido) as they will now be able to get the latest phones such as the iPhone and use it on the Telus and Bell network.

For those that are bringing in grey market phones, the choices will be much greater once the new network is up and running and hopefully over time costs will also drop as the retention teams kick in to high gear offering better plans to people that plan on jumping ship. Rogers has prepared itself for this by offering high demand cell phones on lengthy contracts. The iPhone and BlackBerry Bold were both offered with 3 year contracts. When the touchscreen BlackBerry arrives you can bet Rogers will be pushing for 3 year contracts as well.

Genuity Capital Markets equity analyst Dvai Ghose said avoiding a GSM network build-out will help the companies save capital expenditure costs while being able to tap into the “plethora” of new HSPA devices that will become available to cellphone users in the next year.

“It may not be an immediate reason to do it for the cost savings, but there’s a more immediate reason to do it for the iconic devices,” Ghose said.

Representatives from Bell Canada and Telus declined to comment on the possibility of a unified network upgrade.

For Telus and Bell, the build out of a 3G network not only means they will be able to offer the newest trendy phones and pdas but they will also be able to negotiate with the new wireless carriers that recently bid on the Canadian Government’s wireless spectrum auction on roaming agreements. The new carriers were originally given one choice when it came to roaming on competitor networks because there was only one network–provided by Rogers.