In Canada where spectrum for frequencies have been deregulated means smaller mobile vendors have entered the marketplace changing the Canadian mobile telecom space. Enter Wind Mobile, Public Mobile and Mobilicity. Both of these start-ups have spent millions and are clawing for new mobile subscribers.
The big three mobile telecoms are petitioning the CRTC to limit the spectrum sale to these new providers. It seems that this is just the big companies trying to squash any competition to a country where we pay one of the highest mobile fees in the world. The new smaller carriers have created a nice option for consumers here in Canada. These carriers have caused the big three to invoke their own lower cost companies for fear of losing subscribers.
As long as there is spectrum available shouldn’t it be to the highest bidder? One of the major obstacles for Wind is the lack of Canadian ownership which has been mitigated for now but keeps popping up as an obstacle to block Wind for further market entry. Both Wind and Public Mobile have individually spent millions outfitting both their networks it would make sense if these two companies merged to combine their share of spectrum, resources for their network and combine subscribers. The combined subscribers can put a significant dent against the big three with larger customer base. Then the combined spectrum and bandwidth can propel the growth of each carrier even if a partnership was reached to bid for the spectrum with combined resources of the two. Canadian ownership may no longer be an issue if a new company is formed with North American ownership.
This may be a case where the three smaller companies can combine their resources and possibly even merge to become a larger player within the Canadian telecom carrier market. With hopefully more powerful resources they can create another large carrier which will cause wireless pricing to drop again. Since their mobile strategies are both mainly local it may give them more leverage to spend towards a national network and possibly partner with carriers in the States for nationwide roaming. Combining resources can lead to larger hardware purchasing volumes which would also open up the possibilities of more phones for consumers as Wind has very limited handsets available. While Public Mobile has a few more handsets available I think it may be a good idea to team up and to offer a larger handset variety to consumers.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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