Back on December 11th Industry Minister Tony Clement overturned the CRTC’s decision and gave Globalive the green light to launch their WIND Mobile brand. He stated “It is a Canadian company that meets Canadian ownership and control requirements”.
It’s been several weeks and he’s still getting some flack for this choice… and probably will for some time. The main reason for the backlash is the fact that the foreign-ownership rules have somewhat been rewritten and bent to accommodate the governments 2008 wireless auction.
Clement stated in an interview “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.”
I’m sure Dave Wireless, Public Mobile are feeling pretty good at this point. They’ll be launching their networks and will bring in more competition (although not national players)…however if it was not a “Globalive decision” then why were the rules re-written? Regardless, WIND Mobile is here now and bringing on new customers and offering Canadians more choice.
This will be a defining year for Canada and we will see our rate plans drop and hopefully customer service increase.
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