Lacavera: “Incumbents were allowed to make a mockery of the regulatory process”

Today at the 2010 Canadian Telecom Summit Globalive Chairman and CEO Tony Lacavera took the podium and talked about his latest venture WIND Mobile.

There’s been lots of talk about foreign ownership in Canada ever since Industry Minister Tony Clement gave the green light for WIND to operate by overturning the CRTC’s decision that they are not Canadian enough. Over the past year WIND started offering their wireless service in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and most recently Vancouver.

It seems that Lacavera stepped away from his planned talked and stated that he’s not upset at the CRTC and that CRTC Chairman Konrad von Finckenstein was “just applying the rules and regulations that were in place… the thing that actually really upset me was that the incumbents were allowed to make a mockery of the regulatory process.”

“You heard Mr. Bruce on Monday say that Rogers favours a level playing field. We certainly favour that as well. The fact is in Canada there is not a level playing field when it comes to access to foreign capital… Mr. Bruce also said don’t strengthen the weak, by weakening the strong…Talk about a Goliath pushing around a David”.