Public Mobile seeks a “level-playing field” on foreign ownership, heads back to the Supreme Court of Canada

The Federal Court of Appeal declared that Globalive Wireless Management Corp., WIND Mobile’s parent company, is a “Canadian owned and controlled company”, compliant with Canadian foreign ownership laws and can continue to operate their business. This latest foreign ownership case recently went back to court because of Public Mobile and TELUS both requesting a deeper inquest into their structure, and also wanting “all wireless providers be treated equally and given the same access to capital”.

Public was not pleased with the decision yesterday and sent out a press release stating they are “heading to the Supreme Court of Canada. The company plans to continue its pursuit for a level-playing field on the issue of foreign ownership and control of wireless carriers in Canada”. The reason this time is because of what CEO Alek Krstajic states is the conflicting “flip-flopping” verdicts by various level of authorities.

“There have been five different decision makers in this process with a flip-flopping of the decision each time. Industry Canada, the CRTC, the Governor in Council (Federal Cabinet), the Federal Court and now the Federal Court of Appeal have reached conflicting verdicts. Today’s decision shows us just how clouded this issue has become and demonstrates more than ever the national importance for consistent rules that should be applied equally to all Canadian wireless carriers. If you’re going to change the rules, change them equally for everyone, not just for WIND.”

Public said they have “never been opposed to WIND’s presence in the marketplace”, but just wants the same rules. During the 2008 Spectrum auction Public invested $53 million which gave them the ability to reach 19 million customers in the Toronto and Montreal area. Public is financially backed with $50 million from OMERS, and has a $350 million financing deal with ZTE Corporation and the Export-Import Bank of China.

Source: MarketWire