Canada is Going to Get Interesting....
 

According to CBC, the Canadian Government just cracked the Canadian market wide open by providing for five new carriers:

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/11/28/auction.html

Well they had 4 in each market then Fido got sucked into Rogers. I'm not sure Canada has the customer base to support that many carriers.

Well, here's a chance for Vodafone to enter the North American market under its own name...

Vodafone has been pulling out of non-EU markets (e.g. Japan). I'm not sure that they are still pursuing their global branding approach.

Not really, they ditched Japan and Sweden because they were losing money and activist short-term-oriented shareholders were getting restless at the share price, so Arun Sarin had to appease them (the cash from Vodafone Japan, sold at a $5 bn loss, was handed out as a special dividend). The move into India and the likely takeover of Vodacom in South Africa suggests they'll still go for expansion if it's a growth market, and Canada still is. Probably won't happen, though, but it would be nice to see a new big GSM player in North America (ie, not one of the big American companies and not some ad-hoc investor creation).

Why not?

Just curiosity :)

most of its sparse population live within 200km of the US border, and 90% of canada is pretty sparse....even moose feel lonely out there!

also these new canadian mobile companies, i bet there going to be CDMA (EWWWWW) not GSM!

though i bet Vodafone Australia and Vodafone NZ are a bit shocked about that to!

Canada only has about 60% mobile penetration... at the right price (and whether that is possible is a viable question) there is a lot of room for a new mobile carrier or two to be successful, IMHO.

Canada had four* carriers (sounds a bit like Italy) but the 4th one (Fido) folded and was bought by the other GSM carrier, Rogers. Had there been an adequate market for four carriers Fido would have made a better showing. I just don't hear anyone from Canada saying, "We need more wireless carriers."

*I lump all the regional cellular carriers (Alliant, Bell, NWT?) together as one.

I liked the original FIDO, but the company never really seemed to be ready for prime time. It took them years to build out the system between London and Windsor. Windsor a city of 250,000 didn't get a company store for five years (and then under Rogers).

MVNOs such as Virgin seem to be making it in Canada. Clearly Canadians are taxed at a much higher rate than in the US. Clearly these cost have also caused most US carriers to cancel Canada roaming plans. The original ATT, Cingular, and Verizon all pulled their Canada roaming plans. Canadian plans that roam at no extra charge in the US are massively expensive. Similarly, wireless data rates in Canada are very high. (Bell Mobility just came out with a $7 a month data plan that might make me a liar).

MVNO's like Virgin are doing ok in Canada. Also there has been some movement in terms of free incoming on Rogers and My Faves on Rogers and Telus.

In sum, I think there is room for a well managed and well funded competitor to compete. My concern, however, is that under the guise of "preserving Canadian culture" or some other excuse, Canada will lock out a well healed and aggressive competitor and give the licenses to a home grown cludge.

I'd love to see Voda, Hutchison, etc. come in there and beat the tail off some of these incumbents. For example, I don't think one Canadian carrier offers a phone targeted at the Chinese population. Cantonese prompts, HK centered web pages, cheap roaming in HK would target a massive affluent population in Canada, but I don't think anyone is doing it.

What about something like the original FIDO which had $0.25 a minute roaming in the US?

I agree that Fido didn't work very well, but you'd think that someone like T-Mobile or Vodafone would have seen the opportunity and snatched them up rather than letting them drop like a rotten fruit into Rogers' backet. Assuming that there really is an opportunity there?

Don,

Canadian law has traditionally stopped foreign ownership of their mobile industry. A foreign company could be a minority share holder but to the best of my recollection is that a minority stake couldn't be 49%. That was how we got Cantel ATT, then Rogers ATT, now just plain old Rogers.

In my opinion whatever arguments you can make about preserving Canadian culture in broadcast media really doesn't apply to cellphones. The primary purpose of a phone is communication, not cultural enlightenment. The infotainment that they offer is largely purchased. For example, Telus offers XM radio on their phones.

Any provider in the Canadian market place would be a fool to ignore the regional and cultural preferences of their customers. T-Mobile clearly tailors their product for their market. They are not going to release a German language only system in the United States. It would cost them huge market share.

Any provider in Canada will at least support English and French, will offer Canadian news, Canadian weather, CFL results, and unless they were completely suicidal HOCKEY!

Yoou beth-cha, Ah!

Stu

I for one would love to see something along the line of 'Three canada' but with cs based inside canadaland!

just think three breaching the NA market!

Also i think canada moving away from cdma would be a good way to harmonise the transitions maybe the canadian network licenses should state that the new networks must be gsm baes, the UK networks have had a history of offering sim only packs encouraging the re-use of unused gsm handsets!

I'm not sure they "folded" but yes, they were bought out by Rogers. Similarly Clearnet was the CDMA price leader until they were bought out by Telus. One strategy for a new entrant is to grow in urban markets until they too are bought out by an incumbent.

BTW a new entrant would be crazy to not use GSM. Indeed, Bell and Telus are at such a disadvantage to Rogers because they're still on CDMA that they both now offer a "World" BlackBerry that has CDMA plus quadband GSM so that their lucrative business users will stay with them but still be able to use their phones when travelling outside of Canada. I'm sure that if Bell and Telus could redo their decision to go CDMA they'd choose GSM instead.

Note too that the CRTC requires the incumbents to lease towers to the new entrants for at least 5 years so as to give them the ability to compete without having to immediately build their entire network from scratch.

The one thing that makes me wonder about this is the issue of US roaming. Canadians are far more likely to go to the US than they are to go to any other country. In many parts of the US, GSM coverage is really quite dreadful. If a prospective new Canadian carrier is more concerned about US roaming than it is about worldwide roaming and inexpensive telephone and radio availability, it might well choose CDMA. (Frankly I hope this doesn't happen, but it's very possible.)

Any news from Canada?

Today I read this on an Italian newspaper:
it seems that Orascom Telecom (owner of Wind) bought a license in Canada... time to see Wind CA?

Here is the brief synopsis:

- the incumbents bought lots of new spectrum
- we are going to have one new national carrier likely: Yak. It bought spectrum everywhere in Canada except southern Quebec. Quebecor bought huge amounts of spectrum throughout Quebec and none outside. A joint venture, a favourable roaming agreement or a merger of these two carriers is highly likely. With each other, they could have great coverage nationwide.
- there are some regional players: Shaw Communications, Data and Audio-Visual, Eastlink (an Atlantic Canada cable operation), etc. Canada is ready for some regional carriers; some favourable roaming agreements could do wonders here.

All these carriers will be using 1700 MHz spectrum. There are few phones that currently support it, unfortunately. There will be more.

The incumbent CDMA carriers are of interest. No one knows what technology they will deploy. There are strong rumours that they are going to shift to UMTS/HSPA or LTE.

Rogers, the existing GSM provider, will deploy UMTS/HSPA almost certainly. It is widely believed that all the new carriers will do the same.

It's expected that the new carriers could be on the air as soon as Easter 2009.

Interesting. Re: the earlier comments, Vodafone Fiji is only 49 percent owned by Vodafone, with the rest owned by the Fijian government (who seem content to let Voda run the show). Og Vodafone in Iceland isn't owned by Vodafone at all, but operates on something like a franchise arrangement. I don't know how applicable these arrangements would be to Canada, but the 49 percent rule is just plain silly, even if they're afraid of having everything being swallowed up by, and operated as extensions of, large US companies.

OTOH, Voda once owned tele.ring in Austria, a very small carrier, and were (stupidly) advised by McKinsey & Company to ditch it, as they should only ever be the largest or second-largest company in each market, rather than try to grow a business. Result: No Voda presence at all in Austria. But it shows they'd probably not go with a start-up business.

Yak Communications, owned by Globalive Communications Corp. is the group including Orascom Telecom.

Yes. Globalive/Yak is a relatively small company. They can't finance this sort of expansion on their own. However Canada has foreign ownership restrictions on critical industries like telecommunications so Globalive will have to remain in apparent control even though they won't be able to put up most of the money.

See e.g. http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=625552 (but there are many more in the Canadian media.)