Back on December 11th, 2009 Industry Minister Tony Clement decided to overturn the CRTC’s decision and gave Globalive the green light to launch their WIND Mobile brand. They are heavily backed by Egyptian-based Orascom Telecom by having equity stake to the tune of 65%. He stated “It is a Canadian company that meets Canadian ownership and control requirements”.
The foreign ownership rules were somewhat rewritten and this foreign ownership issue will be in the news for many more months to come. In January Clement backed his decision by saying “This government made a decision a couple of years ago that we wanted more competition in the wireless space, that this was important for consumers, it was important for our economy… So the momentous decision wasn’t the Globalive decision, the momentous decision was the decision we made a couple of years ago to set aside spectrum for auction to new entrants, rather than the current incumbents.”
Today during parliamentary hearings Konrad von Finckenstein, chairman of the CRTC, said “The control of the communications sector should stay in Canadian hands. No foreign entity should own more than 49 per cent”.
What are your thoughts on this?
(Via: Globe)
