Sirius Canada and Bell Canada have teamed up to provide Sirius' commercial-free music channels on Bell Mobility multimedia phones.
Streamed directly to Bell Mobility phones via the Bell wireless high speed network, the Sirius programming is available immediately for $8/month (Canadian) on multimedia-capable Bell Mobility phones, (like the LG Chocolate, LG Fusic, Samsung m610 and Samsung a900). The service is powered by mSpot.
Here's the lineup of Sirius channels currently available:
- SIRIUS Hits 1
- The Pulse
- 60’s Vibrations
- Totally 70’s
- Big 80’s
- Classic Vinyl
- Classic Rewind
- Hair Nation
- First Wave
- The Spectrum
- Soul Town
- Heart & Soul
- New Country
- Prime Country
- Jazz Café
- Band à Part
- Iceberg Radio
- CBC Radio 3
- Area 33
- Chill
The Canadian cell provider,Telus, also provides this service, using content from XM.
I tried it for 2 weeks, and it was totally unreliable (dropouts everywhere I went) with very poor sound. That, and a limited selection of channels, made it worthless for me. If the Telus example is any indicator, this service is not yet ready for "prime time".
The upside is it lead me to "real" satellite radio thanks to XM.
MobileMag had a similar experience with their XM/Telus review:
http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/xm-canada-streaming-on-telus-mobile-radio-reviewed.html
Interestingly enough, they said the sound quality was GOOD, which I didn't expect.
True, Jazzfan, but if they ever do get the reception to be more reliable, this could become the waive of the future. More and more cell phone companies are offering satellite radio programming. This will make it even more easy for Mel Karmazin to bring commercials to the merged satellite radio company because the cell phone companies will simply "follow the leader." With internet radio fading away due to the recent royalty ruling, there will be very little radio music programming that is commercial-free.
Most people will ultimately resign themselves to this fact, and they'll continue to pay for satellite/cell phone radio programming because the quality and diversity of the the programming will still be a thousand times better than the quality and diversity of traditional commercial radio programming.
The time to stop the commercialization of the satellite radio music channels is now.
Down with the merger.
Why don't phone companies create a 99% reliable cell phone before they worry about all of the extras? It's a cool idea in theory but I'd rather have a cell phone that doesn't lose signal as I walk through my house.
Ryan,
Thank you for the link to the MobileMag article. It was interesting that they rated the Telus/XM Radio service so highly.
So, they were impressed with the quality of the sound on the same Samsung phone I use as well. Thinking back on my brief experience, I suppose the sound might not have been too bad....IF the signal had been consistently available to hear it!!
BTW....the area I live in is replete with cell towers, so coverage was not an issue. I still believe the product needs a lot more development before it's widely marketed.