It’s been a while since my last update, and honestly, I’ve missed writing to you. I owe you a proper one: good news to start, and some less good news too. I’d rather give you both openly, in the same post. Let’s take a couple of minutes together.
I said spring 2026 for early access. It’s going to be summer 2026 instead, and I want to take the time to explain why properly, because you deserve the real reasons, not a vague “we need a bit more time.”
There are two. The first is regulatory, and partly out of my hands. The second is the product itself, which I want to hand you the right way.
The regulatory piece: a registration and a licence
Running a real phone service in Canada isn’t something you just flip on. You need permission from the regulator, the CRTC, and it comes in more than one piece.
The good news, and it’s real: our domestic registration with the CRTC came through. In plain terms, it’s the green light to operate as a real phone provider in Canada: it covers Canadian phone numbers and Canadian calling, the core of what WIGGWIGG does. It’s a milestone I’ve been working toward for months, and it felt good to see it land.
But there’s a second piece. To connect your calls beyond Canada, the way any phone you actually rely on has to, we also need the Basic International Telecommunications Services (BITS) licence. In plain terms, it’s the one that lets us connect your calls with the rest of the world, not just within Canada. That one isn’t in my hands yet, but everything I hear says it’s coming very soon. I’d rather have it for real before I open the doors, so your calls work everywhere from day one, not just within Canada. So I wait a little longer, and the moment it lands, that blocker is gone.
The applications: close, but not ready to hand you yet
In my last update I told you the native iOS and Android applications had moved from “someday” to “on the roadmap,” because ten test sessions showed me that people expect an icon in their App Store, not a web application they install from Safari by hand.
I’ve been building them hard ever since. Calling, the lock screen, notifications, signing up, buying a number: all of it. And it’s genuinely close.
But close isn’t ready. I’m still sitting with test users, watching where things snag and fixing what only shows up when a real person has the phone in their hands. I’d rather take a few more weeks than hand you something rough, when you trusted me enough to show up early.
And there’s a part of this that isn’t mine to speed up: once the applications are ready, they still have to pass Apple’s App Store review and Google’s Play Store review before they land on your phone. That’s days to weeks I can’t compress, and I’d rather tell you up front than promise a date that assumes it all goes perfectly the first time.
Why I’m not putting a hard date on the full public launch
I used to list two dates: early access, then a full public launch a quarter later. I’m keeping the early access target, summer 2026, because I can see the path to it. But I’m taking the hard public launch date off the site for now. I’ll give it back to you once the licence is in hand and the applications are through review, not before. I’d rather promise you one thing at a time and keep it than give you two dates and miss one.
Where things actually stand
I don’t want this to read as only bad news, because honestly, the last few months have been some of the most productive of the whole project.
Calling on mobile went from rough to something I use every day: real in-call controls, answering from the lock screen, Bluetooth and wired headsets, the small stuff that makes a phone feel like a phone. On the vault side, autofill drops your passwords in for you, right where you need them, with no copy-paste and no pause in your day. And a lot of quieter work went into reliability and privacy under the hood, the parts you should never have to think about.
The product is in the best shape it’s ever been. What stands between you and early access is a licence that’s almost here and applications that are almost ready. I’d rather take the time to get both right, for you.
Thank you for being here. Truly. Knowing there are people genuinely waiting for what I’m building is what keeps me going. I’ll see you this summer, and I can’t wait to hand you something worth the wait. Until then I’ll keep you posted, the same honest way as today.
CAB is the founder of WIGGWIGG, a privacy-first digital identity platform built in Quebec, Canada.