Asides

Scotia Capital: “We do not expect new entrants to have a meaningful financial impact on incumbents until 2011-2012″

Just found these videos that were put online by Wind Mobile (formally Globalive Wireless). Both Anthony Lacavera (Chairman of Globalive Holdings) and Ken Campbell (CEO of Wind Mobile) speak about how their new wireless company can be shaped by the Canadian public.

Campbell says “Wind is not just another wireless company. It’s a concept that was founded on the believe in both listening and acting on the wishes of our customers. And on the believe that wireless in Canada can and will be better. We believe in offering a superior level of customer service, working with customers every step pf the way to ensure your needs are being met. Most important, we believe we can change the way Canadians experience wireless. We are going to be working hard to make wireless better in Canada.”

Lacavera stated “…our vision is to create the most unforgettably positive experience in Canada. How? By speaking with you, not at or over you. By making every site you visit, every store you set foot in and every call you have with us into a meaningful conversation to help build something better, together. We’ll make it as easy as possible to be a customer. You’ll have more control over your mobile experience than you’ve ever had before. And you’ll get all of this at a price you can afford.

There is one thing that is certain with Wind. Current carriers are worried about how they will impact their market share. As we’ve stated before, Wind (Globalive) is backed by Orascom, a major global wireless player and they know how to succeed. In Canada we have a wireless penetration of 70%. Still a great deal of growth is possible and about 20 million wireless customers. The growth is there and the opportunity is alive.

In a report we received by Jeff Fan, Warren Hastings and Anubhav Mehla of Scotia Capital called “Wireless Is Still In Its Early Days”, they state “We expect new entrants will grow the market faster than the status quo. Under the current industry structure, we estimate Canadian wireless penetration could increase by roughly 3% per year. With new players, we expect this to accelerate the penetration. We believe this additional growth will primarily be in the low end of the wireless market, as new entrants do not have the network capacity, coverage, business model, and access to handsets to address mid- to high-end subscribers.”

In addition, “We do not expect new entrants to have a meaningful financial impact on incumbents until 2011-2012. We have met with all the new entrants recently and expect the launches to be a bit later and/or less broad than originally planned, due mainly to the cell site sharing and roaming negotiation process. We believe the initial focus for Globalive and Public Mobile will be at the low end of the wireless market by offering large voice and text plans without contracts.”

Surprisingly no mention of DAVE Wireless. The key words in that above statement is “meaning financial impact”. Rogers, Bell and TELUS must be cringing at those words as somebody is walking into their territory. Any sort of financial impacts hurts a company, and more importantly its shareholders.

However, Globalive has always said that there target is to bring on 1.5 million customers within 3 years and offer us Canadians choice – 2 brands actually. A higher end brand targeted to business and data users, plus a low-cost flanker brand that will offer a fixed-price monthly plan that has no contract, allows unlimited calling within your area and rollover minutes.

Who knows where Wind will take us, but they are facing challenges and continually overcoming them. What are your thoughts on the new carriers? Will you jump on board with one of them?