Video: WIND, Rogers & Mobilicity talk competition and unlocking phones

At the Canadian Telecom Summit earlier this week the final panel of the event was called “Advanced Wireless Service”. It was an open discussion moderated by the Globe’s Telecom Reporter Iain Marlow. The panelist were CEO of Wind Mobile Ken Campbell, EVP Marketing of Rogers Communications John Boynton and President & CEO of Mobilicity Dave Dobbin.

Over the hour conversation they talked a great deal about the recent wireless spectrum auction and if carriers paid to much for spectrum (total amount was $4,254,710,327) , should their be a spectrum cap, unlocking cell phones, customer loyalty, bundling and competition. In the video below you’ll see a short clip from each carrier respond to the question “How long can Canada support more carriers with a much smaller population?”. Each carrier had a different answer:

Mobilicity stated they don’t know how long.

Rogers said “It’s a great question and probably should have been brought up and discussed before the auction… I think we’ll see how things shake out, I think we’ll see where everybody ends up in market share and profitability. Again, it’s just going to get down to the customer to decide who’ll they want to be with in the long term”.

Wind stated “The answer isn’t 3. The answer isn’t 2… can this country support four, probably. The economics of this business is certainly four, probably five. The economics of this business has changed dramatically. I think there is room in this market for more competition and we’ll see where the dust settles at the end of the day.”