It seems that Mobilicity isn’t the only one who can be ticked off at Rogers launching the Chatr brand. Wind Mobile has now unleashed the legal dogs upon Rogers by filing a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau:
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Lacavera stressed his Competition Bureau complaint was different from Mobilicity chairman John Bitove’s, which many legal experts and wireless executives had dismissed out of hand because Rogers’ prices did not undercut the new entrants’ pricing, but rather matched it.
Mr. Lacavera said he wasn’t “whining” about competition, but merely wanted to address Chatr’s marketing material, which has built a campaign around the fact that it has the same prices as many new entrants, such as Wind and Mobilicity, but has a much more stable network with “fewer dropped calls.” The influential Canadian telecom consultancy SeaBoard Group, among others, has previously criticized Wind for having a spotty network, though many in the industry say this is normal for a new wireless network and it is, in fact, improving with time.
But these dropped calls, Mr. Lacavera said, are the result of a “regulatory loophole” related to a “hard” hand-off, where calls are dropped when Wind customers roam from Wind’s network territory onto the network of a big incumbent. He said this is in contrast to other countries where a “soft” hand-off is the norm, whereby the call is seamlessly transferred back and forth from one network to the other without the call ending and annoying the consumer.
It totally makes sense that Rogers is going to act in a manner that some such as these new cell companies would see as being predatory. They have the finance to do so. And I am pretty sure that they feel that they have to protect their market share any way they can. Personally, I can tell Rogers how to deal with the threat of new entrants in the cell phone market. Lower your prices to be in the area of the new entrants, give superior customer service, and push the advantage of a mature network. They don’t need to create a new brand to do this. Just take the Rogers band which they spent so much money on and do all of what I mentioned. One other thing, they don’t have to beat the prices of the new entrants. They just have to be in the same area and combine it with the other stuff I mentioned. I assure you, they’d do very well if they did that.
But it’s too late now and I suspect that Rogers may wish that they never started Chatr.
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This entry was posted on October 3, 2010 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Lawsuit, Rogers, Wind Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Wind Moblie Serves Up Lawsuit Against Rogers Over Chatr… Shock… Not.
It seems that Mobilicity isn’t the only one who can be ticked off at Rogers launching the Chatr brand. Wind Mobile has now unleashed the legal dogs upon Rogers by filing a formal complaint with the Competition Bureau:
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Lacavera stressed his Competition Bureau complaint was different from Mobilicity chairman John Bitove’s, which many legal experts and wireless executives had dismissed out of hand because Rogers’ prices did not undercut the new entrants’ pricing, but rather matched it.
Mr. Lacavera said he wasn’t “whining” about competition, but merely wanted to address Chatr’s marketing material, which has built a campaign around the fact that it has the same prices as many new entrants, such as Wind and Mobilicity, but has a much more stable network with “fewer dropped calls.” The influential Canadian telecom consultancy SeaBoard Group, among others, has previously criticized Wind for having a spotty network, though many in the industry say this is normal for a new wireless network and it is, in fact, improving with time.
But these dropped calls, Mr. Lacavera said, are the result of a “regulatory loophole” related to a “hard” hand-off, where calls are dropped when Wind customers roam from Wind’s network territory onto the network of a big incumbent. He said this is in contrast to other countries where a “soft” hand-off is the norm, whereby the call is seamlessly transferred back and forth from one network to the other without the call ending and annoying the consumer.
It totally makes sense that Rogers is going to act in a manner that some such as these new cell companies would see as being predatory. They have the finance to do so. And I am pretty sure that they feel that they have to protect their market share any way they can. Personally, I can tell Rogers how to deal with the threat of new entrants in the cell phone market. Lower your prices to be in the area of the new entrants, give superior customer service, and push the advantage of a mature network. They don’t need to create a new brand to do this. Just take the Rogers band which they spent so much money on and do all of what I mentioned. One other thing, they don’t have to beat the prices of the new entrants. They just have to be in the same area and combine it with the other stuff I mentioned. I assure you, they’d do very well if they did that.
But it’s too late now and I suspect that Rogers may wish that they never started Chatr.
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This entry was posted on October 3, 2010 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Lawsuit, Rogers, Wind Mobile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.