Wirelessnorth.ca

Packed house at Toronto Board of Trade this morning for Dave Dobbin president of the DAVE wireless group. No it wasn’t named after him. DAVE is the last “national” new entrant from Canada’s 2008 Spectrum Auction to announce their launch plans. DAVE has spectrum in places like Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto covering a lot of Canada by population, if not by area. They are also shut out of the east and Quebec, so they’ll need roaming arrangements outside of the big cities western and central cities.

Dave: In 2002 Tanzania got 3G, in 2007 Canada was still running 2G. In 2007 data cost thousands of dollars per gigabit, now $5. Since then then the mere threat of competition has transformed the industry. Now 6 3G+ networks available or under construction. System access fees are now gone, data prices have come crashing down.

This is small compared to what is coming next in Canada says Dave. It’s going to be a mess in Canada over the next year, and I’m happy to be a part of that.

Those carriers in the world with happiest customers, fastest growth, best at building shareholder equity are: focused on specific segments, do not have the cheapest prices, but they provide the best value. In Canada we don’t have Carriers like that.

Here are the answer to the top 3 questions about Dave:

Is there really enough room in Canada for another wireless provider?

Yes, for one penetration we have the lowest penetration in the developed world. If all we do is grow Canada from today’s penetration (70%) to just that of the US today (90%) would mean adding 6M new customers. That’s the size of Bell mobility.

Next consider wireless substitution, in Canada only 8% have substituted land lines for wireless. If we only catch up to the US today (20%) we could build a business the size of MTS alstream.

There are 10M customers, 4M prepaid + 6M postpaid who’s contracts come up for renewal every year. JD Power “only 20% of Canadian customers want to renew with their current carrier”.

Do you really have enough money to build a network

Equipment is so much cheaper now. Cell sites that used to require a shipping container sized instalation on the roof of a building, can now fit in a briefcase-sized box and are 3x as powerful. Also we are not covering the whole country we are covering urban cities.

How will you compete, wont the big guys crush you?
We are going to be the westjet of carriers. We’re not playing the same game we are going to be much more flexible. Anything that’s possible to outsource, we’ve outsourced. Our billing systems, our network is being managed (by Ericsson) global-scale companies are powering DAVE. DAVE is profit-sharing with these partners, aligning incentives between them and their suppliers.

When Launching?
We are launching in the “spring” in Toronto. But not until it is ready. Will only launch when it “works” [ed - so not like Toronto HydroOne Wireless then eh?]

CRTC, how is your foreign ownership going
Fine, it’s going well

what are you launching with?
Blackberry, Nokia, Sony Ericsson (no android announcement)

How are you competing?
We are NOT competing head-on. We are going for deep segmentation. We are are not going for premium customers who travel a lot or need big networks. We are targeting urban customers and we’ll give them the best value.

No contracts
If you like contracts, go to law school. We have no contracts and no subsidized phones. “When you go to Esso, to fill up with gas, they don’t sell you a car!”, “Your electricity company doesn’t try to sign you up for a new flat screen TV”. Handset subsidies is a broken model says Dave. [ed. but what about people that don't want to or can't afford to spend up-front for a phone? no financing options]

Name of company?
We will not be called DAVE wireless says Dave Dobbin who is getting tired of everyone assuming the company was named after him. [look for an announcement maybe even later today?]

That’s all folks.

UPDATE: Dave’s personal phone is a Google Nexus One. I mentioned that google phone’s would work well on DAVE’s AWS spectrum. He corrected me to say actually it works REALLY well on their spectrum but wouldn’t say more than that for now.