Canada is a telecom backwater, says bold backer of Wind Mobile

[bylo]

Some background on Wind's operations worldwide, its owner and its foray into the Canadian market: Canada is a telecom backwater, says bold backer of Wind Mobile

Naguib Sawiris, the billionaire scion of Egypt’s most prominent business family, dove into the embers of post-invasion Iraq with a $5-million (U.S.) bid to offer cellphone service and rose from the ashes four years later to sell his network for $1.2-billion.

Mr. Sawiris has a gift for extracting profits from the world’s most volatile telecom markets. His wireless company is the largest taxpayer in unstable Pakistan. He partnered with the dictatorship of North Korea to become the first cellphone provider in that country. And he operates in impoverished Bangladesh, where the monthly bill is around $2.50.

“We go where people don’t dare to go,” the executive chairman of Orascom Telecom Holding SAE and Weather Investments SpA told The Globe and Mail in an exclusive interview. “We’re crazy, adventurous.”

Which is why he now finds himself in Canada – a country with an investment climate he says is worse than the emerging markets in which he usually operates...