Wirelessnorth.ca

So stop me if you’ve heard this one: A dog, a lizard and a yak walk into a bar….

As the CEO of Globalive, the winner of the largest geographical amount of the wireless spectrum auction, Anthony Lacavera started off by encouraging the audience at this month’s Mobile Monday meeting to ask him the controversial questions. He is the first CEO of a wireless company to speak to a MoMoTO crowd, and it appeared that he didn’t want to hide behind the messaging in a glossy marketing package.

Many may not know Globalive, but will likely be aware of their home phone and long distance services that operate under the name of Yak. Yak will soon be offering wireless service to it’s 1 million customers, as well as trying to get some of the unsatisfied customers from the other companies to come over to their side of the fence.

So what is Yak going to do with their $442 million share of the wireless spectrum? Yak will be launching their service in late 2009 to five Canadian cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa. They are going to be targeting their existing customer base, providing them with the same customer service they have become accustomed to in their home and long distance services. They’ll scoop up some dissatisfied customers from the existing cell phone companies, and they’ll try really, really, really hard to make them happy. They’re also going to be targeting the almost 40% of Canadians that don’t already have cell phones, which is perhaps a market that Rogers, Bell, and Telus have long forgotten about.

When the auctions were first announced, many people were hoping that new wireless service providers would break the big players, shaking them to the ground. With Yak coming into the picture, it doesn’t seem that we’ll be saying good-bye to Rogers, Bell or Telus anytime soon.

Yak intends to start off by competing with the smaller wireless companies of Fido, Solo and Koodoo. Even though we won’t see them square off with the Big 3 right away, Tony says that the consumers are already seeing the effects of having a new competitor in the market. New plans have already been announced that remove the system access fees, and allow customers to carry over their minutes to the next month. Tony also said that Yak will be exploring options that have worked in other countries to help stimulate a more competitive wireless market in Canada, a country whose wireless service ranks as the most expensive worldwide.

Tony spoke about the challenges that face them, most of which will come from getting Bell, Rogers and Telus to co-operate with them. Yak would like to be able to share some space on the physical towers that are currently owned by the other companies, but has been given a slew of excuses as to why that won’t work. One example he gave was that he was told the towers couldn’t support the weight of new equipment. He also mentioned some concern about getting roaming to work across the country when Yak’s customers are outside their service areas. Eventually he said, the co-operation from the other companies may only come in the form of government regulated rules since there is no incentive for them to play nice.

It’ll be a GSM network [ed- is that HSPA or just "GSM"?] . They have the AWS part of the spectrum, which means that only phones with AWS capability will work on their network. They are anticipating for 1.5 million users within the first 3 years. (Notice that I didn’t call them subscribers, since Yak won’t have any contracts.)

One thing that struck me about Tony was that he seemed to truly recognize that the customers are the real strength behind any wireless company. He related to us stories about how he continues to call Yak’s customers as a customer service rep, just to make sure he stays in touch with his customers. When he started talking to people about wireless service, and he realized just how much people wanted to express their opinion, he had the idea of creating a website where people can talk about wireless service in an unmoderated forum. That was when the Wireless Soapbox (http://www.wirelesssoapbox.ca) was created, and it’s pretty apparent that he genuinely would like to hear what Canadians have to say about their wireless service.

While there was no shortage of questions for Tony, in the end, the tough and controversial questions didn’t come; on member commented that there weren’t any tough questions to ask. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens with their service when they launch Yak Mobile in late 2009 – you’ll be seeing their phones appear in retail stores nationwide.

My remaining question: how can I get out of my 3 year contract with Rogers so I can switch to Yak if I decide I’d like to do that?

- Big thanks to James Eberhardt of Echo Mobile for this report from momotoronto