Wirelessnorth.ca

881 Million is a lot of small change to be scrounging around for under the couch cushions. For Canada’s Spectrum auction, laying down the thick end of a billion at this stage is like bringing an elephant gun to a knife fight. Unsatisfied just to carve out just any portion of the spectrum set aside for new entrants, Niagara’s pachydermian offer tramples right across all of the spectrum available to Bell, Telus or Rogers as well.

Niagara Networks surprised pretty much everyone including the major media with this move. Consider 150M as roughly the minimum to have a shot at a viable national network. 300M (Quebecor, MTS) shows a little more guts by signaling a willingness to shut out any other new entrants as well.

But, 881 Million, well that’s just showing off.

Putting down a bid twice as big as reasonably expectable, Niagara is sending a fearsome signal to both the group of 30-odd entrants AND to the big three. Despite their rhetoric, the fact the entrants only requested points sufficient to cover the set-aside spectrum, offers some signal to the big guys that they might be of the nature to play nice once in market. Niagara is signaling no such offer of solace.

So who is Niagara Networks? from their submission to Industry Canada:

The founders of Niagara Networks have been involved in various spectrum licensing and policy issues. The President of Niagara Networks was President of Bit Pacific Technologies Incorporated. Bit Pacific Technologies participated as part of a consortium that applied for Local Multipoint Communications Services (LMCS) in a 1996 comparative licensing process…. The President of Niagara Networks was involved in the Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) licensing process and has been an advocate of new entrant set-asides with Industry Canada for many years. Niagara Networks respectfully submits, we have industry knowledge and experience with communications networks, services, spectrum, licensing and auction processes.

The internets have their theories that Sprint is in the mix. But I have my doubts.

The Post reports Niagara is backed by “North American” partners. Tom W has some words here .

By CRTC rules, no more than 35% 46.7% of an entrant can be US owned, but one can imagine than the financial engineering wizards are straining to concoct all manner of creative ways to count the definition “35%”.

Of course other big player unaccounted for yet is T-mobile. As they already own the equipment and all of the exact same spectrum band in the U.S., they’d be crazy not to have a horse in this race. And with T-Mobile’s potential economies of scale on the equipment side, they can put a higher value on spectrum and you’d expect them to be aligned with one of the leaders.

But last we checked, T-mobile is a German company.

We’ll find out March 31st when the beneficial ownership of each of the numbered companies is disclosed. The final auction doesn’t happen til June. Take a seat, stay tuned to WirelessNorth.ca, this one’s going to be a bruiser.

previously: The List Of Applicants for the 2008 Canadian 3G Spectrum Auction

^{Updated Mar17: Corrected roughly a hundred spelling mistakes. Mental note not to post from the red-eye.}

^{Updated Mar17: corrected/confirmed it’s 46.7% ownership that can be foreign. That thickens the plot.}