We caught up with Tony Lacavera of Globalive this morning to speak with him about yesterday’s CRTC decision to examine how much foreign ownership Orascom actually has.
We interviewed him about a month ago, at that time he was looking forward to the coming months and really making an impact in the Canadian wireless scene. Upon meeting him this morning I was banking on him looking concerned and stressed. I was pleasantly surprised to see him in his usual happy spirits… to Lacavera everyday seems to be the best day on earth! On of the first few words he said to me this morning was “it’s just a bump in the road”.
Back in March Industry Canada actually issued Globalive their licenses, and now they are being investigated deeper to see if they meet all the foreign ownership requirements. Lacavera has a firm belief that the CRTC will understand that Globalive is following the rules and simply want to help Canadians have more choice when it comes to their wireless needs.
The hearings will take place on September 23rd and 24th in Gatineau, Quebec. It usually takes the CRTC up to 120 days to reach a final decision, however with the investigation so late in the game, and so much money on the line with the impending launch (targeted for this Fall), the CRTC said we can expect a decision in a month’s time.
As you’ll see in the video, Tony boldly stated “Globalive will be in the marketplace, this new procedure that the CRTC has introduced has the risk of impacting our launch timelines and the scope of our launch, but we are working very hard to work through this new procedure and we want to ensure everyone that we are going to be in the marketplace, this is not going to effect our business plan long term and we are committed to offering Canadians a new choice in wireless and we will be Canada’s new national wireless carrier… We do think that there is a risk that this could delay our launch or impact the scope of our launch and we really strongly urge the CRTC to make this as fast a review as possible.”
Watch the interview here:
