the Rogers Communications Inc. is hoping more Canadians cut the cord from its land line phones and pick up a cell phone with the push of a new service released on Wednesday.

The company’s cell phone business, Rogers Wireless, announced that it will begin to roll out a so-called “unlicensed mobile access” (UMA) which will allow users to access unlimited calling in their homes through a connection to the Internet.

While a high-speed connection is required, it does not have to be through Rogers, and the company will cover the initial cost of the router with rebate offering. The service is priced at $15 for unlimited local calling and $20 for unlimited calling across Canada, not including the cost of the cell phone.

Both of the company’s wireless brands will carry a version of the UMA service but will be branded and marketed differently. Initially, the service will be pushed by the Fido brand as “Fido Uno” with a number of TV and print advertisements, while the Rogers offering will be marketed with the less catchy “Home Calling Zone” term.

The new service, which is only available on Rogers’ GSM network, is set to accelerate the rate of Canadians who leave their land lines behind for a cell-phone-only life. According to Statistics Canada, about 6.4% of households have replaced their land lines with cell phones.

“Instead of having a few phones that you pay for, you can have one phone, one voice mail service, one caller ID, one address box” said Rogers chief marketing officer John Boynton. “His one phone becomes the phone for everything.”

For now, Rogers aims at marketing the new technology to the youth market, which has been actively courted by Canada’s major cell phone operators as of late. Telus Corp. released its trend-conscious Koodo Mobile discount offering in March and Rogers chief executive Ted Rogers announced it will soon sell the highly popular iPhone smart phone device from Apple Inc. later this year.

“For teenagers, students and young adults, a cell phone is their primary phone,” said Mr. Boynton. “Since about 30% of cell phone calls are done at home, this is a way to save about $35 per month by eliminating the need for a home phone if its not being used.”

Only two Nokia handsets will be available for the company’s UMA service but the it says more will be released later this year. T-Mobile in the U.S. had released a similar UMA service earlier this year and already offers about a dozen handsets including a Research In Motion BlackBerry Curve.

UBS telecom analyst Jeffrey Fan said a UMA service would help take some pressure off Rogers’ existing cellular load, which could help shoulder the extra demand on the network following this summer’s Industry Canada wireless spectrum auction. It is widely expected that any new cellphone companies will be carried on Rogers’ GSM network.

“It will be a lower cost for Rogers to carry the traffic and some of that savings may be transferred to the end user later on,” said Mr. Fan, who has a $52 price target on the stock with a “buy” call.

Financial Post