CLEARNET MAY HOLD SECOND AGENCY REVIEW
By Adnews Staff
At least one portable phone company could be looking for an agency after getting regulatory clearance for its product this week. Clearnet Communications of Pickering, Ont. is one of four companies that won federal licences to offer personal communications service, PCS for short. Currently, the company is in the process of choosing an ad shop for the business communications network it is launching in mid-1996, an operation based on a cellular phone which can also be used as a pager, fax machine and two-way radio. For this enterprise Clearnet has gone into a partnership with Motorola Canada of Montreal and New Jersey-based Nextel Communications. It is too early to say if Clearnet will use the same agency for the PCS business as for the business communciations network, or hire another one, communications and advertising director Rick Seifeddine told Adnews this week. Clearnet now has a long list of agencies which will be pared down to a short list in mid-January.
The other companies that received PCS licences are Rogers Cantel Mobile Communications, Mobility Personacom Canada, both based in Toronto, and Microcell Telecommunications Inc. of Montreal. PCS phones are lower powered and use higher frequencies than cellular phones. They are also smaller, lighter and cheaper. They must be used within 100 metres of a small base station which relays calls locally or internationally. The phones can be used in offices, homes or public locations such as malls, but not in moving vehicles. Eventually they could replace both home and cellular phones. The service will begin in Canada's largest cities in 1997. It is expected to be in most urban markets by the end of 1998 and in smaller centres within five years.
Mobility Personacom Canada is a consortium of the mobile communications divisions of the 11 large phone companies that make up the Stentor group. Each company will be responsible for handling its own advertising, Personacom corporate communications and marketing manager Liz Campbell told Adnews this week. Bell Mobility, which is one of the Personacom partners, uses Cossette Communication-Marketing for most of its advertising. Campbell stressed Cossette's has very strong ties with Bell. Rogers Cantel will use the agency it now has handling its cellular phones, Gee, Jeffery & Partners of Toronto.