Mobilicity, the brand name of parent Data & Audio-visual Enterprises (DAVE) Wireless, began signing up customers on the weekend in Toronto and its surrounding suburbs, promising to extend its HSPA+ network later this year to Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa, the nation's capital.

For $20 a month on top of any of its no-contract plans, subscribers can take one of two unlimited voice calling packages: One to China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam, and the other to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

"The two largest ethnic groups in the Greater Toronto area are Asian and South Asians," company president David Dobbin explained. "Eighteen per cent of the GTA are East Asia and 16 per cent from South Asia. They're huge communities and they're completely underserved."

DAVE Wireless, headed by Toronto businessman and satellite radio network owner John Bitove, paid CDN$243 million in Canada's 2008 AWS spectrum auction for licences covering many of the country's biggest cities. It's also funded by New York's Quadrangle Capital Partners.Unlike Wind Mobile, which is backed by Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holdings S.A.E., Mobilicity isn't trying to build a national network. Instead it's focusing on urban dwellers who aren't looking for the coast-to-coast coverage offered by incumbent carriers.

The Canadian government set aside spectrum for new entrants in the 2008 to encourage competition because three incumbents -- Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus Corp. -- hold about 95 per cent of the wireless market.