Fido Solutions

Fido Solutions is a Canadian cellular telephone service provider owned by Rogers Communications. It used to be owned by Microcell Telecommunications. Fido remains a separate entity from Rogers. Although Fido's parent company, Rogers Communications, also operates another wireless brand named Rogers Wireless, it remains mostly separate as Fido has retained its own retail chain, customer service call centres, network servers and CEO. Fido pioneered the concept of providing unlimited service in select Canadian cities. Fido was the first carrier in Canada to launch a GSM-based network and the first wireless service provider in North America to offer General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) on its network.

History

The original development of Fido was funded in part by Voicestream, now T-Mobile US. Fido was the first provider in Canada to offer a network with the GSM standard.

Acquisition by Rogers

In November 2004, Microcell was acquired by the other competing GSM carrier, Rogers Communications, for an estimated $1.4 billion. At the time of acquisition, Fido had 1,275,094 customers. The company's name was changed to Fido Solutions shortly thereafter. Fido has retained its data roaming service with T-Mobile. Shortly thereafter, Rogers also bought Sprint Canada, a telecom services reseller that was an MVNO partner with Microcell. As of May 2013, Fido had a customer base of 3,372,763 customers, making it Canada's fourth-largest wireless carrier.