Wirelessnorth.ca

Over on the Tyee.ca Steve Anderson makes a few good points:

In last week’s speech from the throne and release of the budget, the government had an opportunity to address digital issues. All that was made clear, however, was that government is committed to opening Canada’s telecommunications and satellite industries to foreign ownership. Giving up on our capacity to meet this challenge and instead relying primarily on foreign investment schemes is not the answer. Such an approach would, at best, miss the lessons learned from the countries that are leading in broadband speed, access and cost.

Link: Why Are Tories Giving up on Canadian Innovation?

[ see also: Canada Needs a Serious Agenda for Media Innovation ]

In markets like the UK, foreign-ownership of carriers has been consistent with a high level of industry competitiveness and mobile innovation. However elsewhere like New Zealand the case is not as clear.

In the wired world, the models that work for driving advanced broadband typically have involved significant investment at the national or municipal level, effectively fibre to the curb as a fundamental public-good infrastructure service like gas, water, or roads with private ISPs servicing and marketing the last “mile” to households. Of course wireless couldn’t be more different. Tower-sharing and in-territory roaming requirements are a step in the right direction of reducing total infrastructure costs. However, instead of otherwise lowering barriers to entry the government seems to set up spectrum auctions as a way to take billions out of ICT investment rather than put it in.

Canada will be joining the ranks of nearly every other country on the planet (save Cuba, any others?) to allow foreign ownership of Canadian telecom companies. Even North Korea recently allowed foreigners to build out a mobile network there. Coincidentally, that was Orascom, the same wolf-in-Wind’s clothing that effectively broke through the regulation here in Canada.

The good news is that the Government is belatedly doing the right thing. They’ve recognized that their policy aims for stimulating industry competition are at odds with the facts on the ground, and at odds with Canada’s antiquated (pre-internet, pre-mobile phone industry) Telecom Act.

One might argue they should have done this before the 2008 spectrum auction. Thereby the feds could have given all the new entrants as well as the incumbents a more fair and level playing field for raising capital. Boy are some still bitter about that.

But not to worry, there’s still the big 700Mhz spectrum auction to come. That’s the real good stuff. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s also a yawning government deficit for which some of that foreign capital may slot in just nicely.

By the way, if you think that all this extracting billions from the telco industry by spectrum auctions will ultimately lower your wireless bill, you may in fact be dreaming.

But whatever, bring on the foreigners. Giddy-up, this business is gonna get interesting.

Tony’s stock options just went way up. So did Dave’s. Those next capital calls are looking much easier now.

On the other side, look for Vodaphone or t-mobile to buy Bell/Telus by sometime tomorrow.

LINK: Canada may consider foreign control of telecoms

The Canadian wireless industry has come a long way in just 3 years. From the world’s crap hand-me-down phones, years behind the curve on 3G, and worse pricing on data than some 3rd world countries to…

• From zero to not one, not two but 4 (and soon to be more) national 3.5G HSPA GSM-standard networks in Canada
• New price plans from Wind, DAVE and Public shaking up the landscape.
• Fiercer competition between the major carriers now that they are all on the same network technology with all the same devices
• FAST 3G networks at 21MBs (and 4 of em!) that’s faster than any 3g network in the US
• Suddenly great deals on rocket sticks everywhere. And tethering that works and portable hotspots and other fun things.
• ATT&T is not in Canada, count your lucky stars
• Unlike on ATT&T, a 30% rate of call dropping New York or 100% anytime at SXSW in Austin, is not considered normal
• Not one but 3 choices of carrier for the iPhone, and more choices for the latest Androids and Blackberries
• Number portability, at last it was mandated and it gives consumers more power to switch
• Wireless penetration rates rising rapidly, and the appetite for smartphones by consumers that is taking even the carriers by surprise
• SIM cards on every network. (the market for unlocked phones is coming to Canada). Just wait for the Google phone store to get to Canada, unraveling the relationship between carriers and devices, sometime this year we can hope. And if we ever get Google voice, be ready for the perfect storm of telco disruption.
• And skype is starting to work well on mobiles, just to turn the screws on the legacy telcos a little more

If I were a carrier, I’d be a little stressed out by this heightened level of competition in the sleepy old wireless north (aka Canada). For anyone else working with mobile, it’s a great time to be Canadian. Call it pent up demand, leap-frogging, or sweet redemption for years spent at the back of the pack, but suddenly Canada is looking good at wireless. Expect big things this decade.

Agree, disagree or flame away.

This is the other face of new competition in Canadian Telecom. We’ve been hearing rumblings this would happen for a while now. Rogers is leaning-down and girding for the coming price war.

These winds of change (so to speak) come blowing not only from the impending entry of new entrants (Tony Clement’s particular Windy conundrum notwithstanding) but even more so from a MUCH more competitive landscape amongst the big boys now that Bell and Telus have gotten their HSPA on.

This next bit will come as some cold consolation to those laid off today. However, a newly competitive telecom sector will, in time, bring broad benefits to nearly every other sector of the Canadian economy. In the new and evermore digital economy, innovation is driven by connectivity. A faster pace of innovation as evidenced by falling prices and much greater availability of leading edge wireless devices and services (as has been a strong trend for the last 1-2 years) is at least one encouraging sign for driving economic growth in the years ahead.

LINK: Rogers laying off 900 as part of cost cuts

Previously on WirelessNorth.ca: Where oh where your wireless bill goes (as with soylent green it’s mostly people. And profits. At least circa 1998 it was)

^{ps. As always, WirelessNorth.ca is hiring aspiring telcom pundits and snarks (or any combination of the two). The pay, not so good though.}

After Industry Canada spent over a million dollars trying and failing to launch a cell phone comparison tool for Canada, someone has gone and done it for free. That someone is J Ben Benjamin in partnership with web shop einfiniteweb.com. While not so much yet the world’s prettiest website, it’s gets the job done. You can compare voice minutes by time of day and incoming vs outgoing, data and text and a slew of other options (tip: look for data under “advanced search” took us a while to find that).

This is commendable work. Despite some progress the carriers have made recently towards simplifying plans, overall rate structures remain highly obfuscated in Canada. Therefore tools like this one that can bring any additional transparency are of great value.

A few caveats though, there are a few things the calculator does not take into consideration. On the cost side remember that all minutes are not created equal and nor are all “evenings”. On Rogers, for example, a minute can be one second long and an evening minute may start hours later than on a seemingly identical Fido plan.

The other factor not considered here is quality or value for service. A cheap plan isn’t much good if the network coverage doesn’t reach you or if all the handsets available are ancient crap (here’s looking at you flanker brands).

Some fun games you might be able to play with this tool: Check out the price discrimination by province! Find the best plans for the rather short list of specific phones actually worth buying: BBerry, Droids, Iphone, Pre etc. (once they all come out). Sounds like fodder for future articles.

LINK: www.cellphoneratecalculator.com

Telus has announced it’s iPhone launch for November 5th of this year, at the same time they are announcing their half of the new 21MB HSPA+ (same speed as Rogers) network they’ve been rolling out with Bell. Telus is calling it “Canada’s largest 3G+ network“. We have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

What we do know, is that things are looking up in Canada Wireless-wise. Compared, for instance, with our poor American neighbours to the south we now have not one but three (and soon to be more) offering the latest 3G standards all of whom offer, generally, far better reliability than the US’s largest GSM carrier AT&T.

On top of which we now have three carriers offering the iPhone 3GS as well as, we trust, some very nice next-generation androids and blackberries (9700’s) any day now.

It’s going to be a very good Christmas to look for smartphones and broadband sticks in your stockings.

We’re at a very interesting time for the wireless industry in Canada. We’re on the eve of new entrants into the industry but already the landscape looks a lot different and already a lot more competitive than just a few years ago. Here’s a snapshot, form our perspective [your perspective may vary] of the state of wireless in Canada. Stay tuned for where we go from here….

Originally presented at FITC Mobile 2009 in Toronto.

In what can only be described as a game of high-stakes legal douchebaggery, Bell and Telus have forced Globalive to review their foreign ownership before a public CRTC hearing. Telus in particular has been throwing every legal means they can at Globalive to try and hold up the upstart’s launch date. Needless to say, Globaliver are eating their livers over this latest development. And probably you should be too. There’s little in this antiquated idea of nationalistic telecom protectionism that helps Canadians in this context. In fact, one could probably point to the long coddling of Canada’s domestic telco industry for our current oligopolic-ish sort of situation.

From Today’s NationalPost:

Globalive Wireless has been racing to bring its offering to market as quickly as possible. By next summer, without the delays occasioned by the CRTC review, Globalive Wireless would have launched its services in many Canadian markets, employed an estimated 2,000 people and spent over $1 billion building its network.

The incumbents responded to the threat of new competition in predictable ways: they cut prices and suggested they would provide better customer service. Fair enough although one wonders whether that would have happened without the threat of more competition. Somewhat more cynically, they sought to game the regulatory system in a way that could delay and seriously complicate the introduction of wireless competition.

LINK: Wireless Wars: Barriers to new providers -Ken Campbell CEO Globalive Wireless
Funny that Rogers doth not protest. It’s almost like they know that as the one carrier selling out iphones, blackberries, and rocket sticks faster than they can back up the trucks, that they are the least of whose lunch will be eaten by the upstarts.

Here’s what we know. Globalive (our only new nationwide entrant) has partnered with Alcatel in the west and Nokia in the east to build them a cellar network. The bad news is they are, reportedly, still in phase of locating acquiring tower real estate. To make life a little more difficult, Globalive is also catching some flack for using a lot of US labour (really Alcatel’s labour) rather than hiring the local talent apparently ready/able to do the work. Take that for what you will.

This is, of course, funny because our government -over much lamentation of the incumbents- mandated something called “tower sharing” in the recent spectrum auction. Meaning that the existing carriers were supposed to share space on their towers with the new kids whenever “reasonable”, “safe” and “practical”. Unfortunately None of the new entrant CEOs we’ve spoken with have particularly optimistic about tower sharing arrangements.

You would thing that after burning through the better part of two billion in a slugfest of an auction last summer, that the hard part would be over for Canada’s new Wireless Entrants. Word is though, that the rollout of wireless coverage across a country this size isn’t so easy either. Leaving aside the obvious challenges of the vast geographies, lets not mention the global economic collapse (not a fun time to be going back to the well for more capital) the new entrants current challenge is finding tower space. Or urban spaces for new towers.

Elsewhere in the world this wouldn’t be as difficult a problem. In the US, europe and many civilized countries, a majority of towers and cell sites are owned by 3rd party companies, vertical wireless hotelling/hosting businesses.

Theoretically, it’s really nobodies interest to have a lot extra tower sites. Municipalities and locals don’t like it, towers and antennas are usually ugly. Finding real estate, building the tower, routing power and data backhaul is expensive so it makes for considerable scale advantages to share.

In Canada though, we don’t have an independent, competitive tower industry. The towers are , by and larger, all owned by the big three. They do share or trade tower space amongst themselves. By share, our sources tell us, you mean “grudgingly” and “like children”.

Contacts a certain big red carrier have been suggesting they will be doing all they can to fill up their towers with equipment, any equipment, just to not leave space for the new entrants. Don’t be surprised if you see the Rogers’ family own toaster-oven staplegunned to a cell tower near you, and so forth.

Altogether, signs don’t point to “likely” that we’ll see meaningful new wireless coverage in Canada this year.

You’ll notice that Bell has primarily hung on to market share in recent years only thanks it’s acquisition of Aliant. Telus is has been aggressive at growing share, while Rogers iPhone bump is less than you might expect. Not less than you might expect however if we plotted revenue share of market instead of subscribers (postpaid+prepaid) which is what this diagram illustrates. Rogers ARPU (average revenue per user) is substantially higher. Rogers advantage of being the only carrier with the latest GSM handsets has helped them maintain the industry highest prices and the highest market share.

These totals include virtual operators (e.g. Virgin counts as Bell) and all of the big guy’s familiar wanker flanker brands.

In all cases every carrier has been adding significant subscriber numbers in every quarter over the last 4 years. But there’s a ways to go yet. Canada is still sadly behind the world in penetration. Previously: Mobile penetration ekes up to 70% in Canada, still sucks

source: CWTA (the horse’s mouth)