Luann Lasalle, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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MONTREAL - A possible move by Bell (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T) to upgrade their networks could allow them to run trendy new smartphones like the iPhone or the BlackBerry Bold, which are now only available in Canada with Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B)

"One would expect Bell and Telus to want to be quite aggressive in being able to compete with Rogers," telecom analyst Mark Goldberg said Friday.

More phones are being built for global markets than to operate in a limited market, said Goldberg of Toronto-area Mark Goldberg & Associates Inc.

"So what's motivating it is wanting to lower the cost of acquiring handsets and accelerate the speed of getting the latest, the coolest handsets," he said of a possible upgrade.

A report Friday suggested that Bell and Telus could make a joint announcement about a network upgrade next week involving the mobile broadband technology, High Speed Packet Access. Bell and Telus didn't provide any comment.

Bell and Telus networks are based on CDMA technology, popular in North America, but not considered a global standard.

Research In Motion's (TSX:RIM) 3G BlackBerry Bold and the new 3G iPhone run exclusively on Rogers, which has GSM and High Speed Packet Access networks that are considered global standards.

Analyst Jonathan Allen of RBC Capital Markets said Rogers could still end up in a superior position for several years due to its head start.

"It's still a question of how long it takes Bell and Telus to roll out a comparable network," he said.

Allen also said a joint effort could make sense to allow Bell and Telus to cater to the high-end business and consumer smartphone market.

"So having high-end devices is a key aspect of moving over to the new network but there are a lot of drawbacks to doing it," Allen said, including cost, network frequency and coverage.

There's no guarantee even if Bell and Telus were sharing upgrading costs that they would get an iPhone or a BlackBerry Bold that would work on such a network due to frequency, he said.

Both Goldberg and Allen said while the two carriers could look at this technology, the question remains how devices that need a next-generation network would operate when they would be outside Bell and Telus coverage areas.

Telus CEO Darren Entwistle recently said that his company will look to a fourth-generation mobile broadband technology, but is carefully reviewing its decision.

"I think what is clear is that as it relates to 4G, we will be going LTE," Entwistle said in a recent conference call to discuss second-quarter financial results.

LTE is primarily aimed at mobile devices and the data they carry, such as video, and is promising to provide a faster experience for consumers who surf the Internet, watch videos or play games on the go.

Allen said he believes it makes more sense for Telus to wait for this technology, which could be launched by Verizon in the United States within the next three to five years and is expected to become the dominant technology.