The IT Nerd

The news has just come in that Globealive Wireless/Wind Mobile has been told by the CRTC that it fails to meet Canadian ownership rules:

In this decision, the Commission sets out its determination in the proceeding initiated by Telecom Notice of Consultation 2009-429, in which it undertook a review of Globalive’s ownership and control. In its review, the Commission considered whether non-Canadians do not own or control Globalive as currently structured. The Commission determines that Globalive does not meet that test. The Commission therefore determines that Globalive has not met the requirements of the ownership and control regime and is therefore not currently eligible to operate as a Canadian telecommunications common carrier.

You can read the full decision here. This basically means that Globealive is forbidden to start up this November. It also means that real competition isn’t coming anytime soon to the Canadian wireless market. Which means that the Canadian consumer is the big loser here. Now Globealive can appeal this decision, but that takes time and cash. Given that, I’m not getting my hopes up.

Another thing that I am sure the media isn’t going to talk about. Globealive has been on a hiring spree. What happens to all of those jobs? They also have cell towers up and have spent a pile of cash, is that all wasted?

All in all, it’s a sad day all around. Canadians don’t get much needed competition in the cell phone space because of archaic foreign ownership rules. The CRTC needs to go. Sooner rather than later.

This entry was posted on October 29, 2009 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags CRTC, 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.