Naguib Sawiris is a guy who’s loud and bombastic. But he’s also very successful having made Orascom Telecom a significant player in the Middle East and Africa cell phone marketplace as well as backing Wind Mobile Canada. Thus, you have to at least listen to what he has to say. Such as what he said to the Globe And Mail recently:
Naguib Sawiris, the brash telecom mogul who started an Egyptian political party after the revolution there, says he was misled by the Canadian government, regrets “totally” his decision to invest here and tells other international financiers not to invest in Canada.
“I tell you we will not bid – unless they set aside the frequencies, unless they really show seriousness that they want to create competition,” Mr. Sawiris told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board Thursday. “But to say, ‘We want to create competition, we want your money.’ They take our money and they leave us to the dogs.”
Ouch. There was more:
“Anybody who asks me, I tell him, ‘Look, we are the stupid investors that poured a billion dollars into Canada here and created 1,000 new jobs, please don’t do this mistake. Don’t come here,’” Mr. Sawiris said. When asked whether he regretted his decision, he added, “Totally. I would actually, if they would give me my money back, minus 10 per cent, I would take it any day.”
Oh yeah, when it comes to the “big three” in Canada, namely Rogers, Bell and Telus, here’s what he had to say:
“You have the most inefficient operators in the world. And why are they like that? If they were that good, why are they just in Canada here?” he asked. “Why don’t we have Rogers in the U.K. or Germany? Why is Vodafone everywhere? Why is France Telecom everywhere?”
He does has a point. Having spent extensive amounts of time in countries such as the UK and Germany, I can say that wireless carriers there are out to provide the best service for the lowest price. That doesn’t happen in Canada. Also one suspects that if any of the “big three” set up shop anywhere else on planet Earth, they’d get their butts kicked due to the fact that they don’t know how to compete.
Now here’s the other side of the coin. What I suspect that Sawiris is doing is shaking things up prior to the upcoming government auction of wireless licenses so that he can slant things in his favor. It’s not what I’d do, but I’m a computer nerd and not a PR expert. And its worked as he’s now got the attention of the government as well as two of the “big three.” The real test is what happens the auction takes place though. Stay tuned for that next year.
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Wind Mobile Backer Calls Investing In Canada “A Mistake”
Naguib Sawiris is a guy who’s loud and bombastic. But he’s also very successful having made Orascom Telecom a significant player in the Middle East and Africa cell phone marketplace as well as backing Wind Mobile Canada. Thus, you have to at least listen to what he has to say. Such as what he said to the Globe And Mail recently:
Naguib Sawiris, the brash telecom mogul who started an Egyptian political party after the revolution there, says he was misled by the Canadian government, regrets “totally” his decision to invest here and tells other international financiers not to invest in Canada.
“I tell you we will not bid – unless they set aside the frequencies, unless they really show seriousness that they want to create competition,” Mr. Sawiris told The Globe and Mail’s editorial board Thursday. “But to say, ‘We want to create competition, we want your money.’ They take our money and they leave us to the dogs.”
Ouch. There was more:
“Anybody who asks me, I tell him, ‘Look, we are the stupid investors that poured a billion dollars into Canada here and created 1,000 new jobs, please don’t do this mistake. Don’t come here,’” Mr. Sawiris said. When asked whether he regretted his decision, he added, “Totally. I would actually, if they would give me my money back, minus 10 per cent, I would take it any day.”
Oh yeah, when it comes to the “big three” in Canada, namely Rogers, Bell and Telus, here’s what he had to say:
“You have the most inefficient operators in the world. And why are they like that? If they were that good, why are they just in Canada here?” he asked. “Why don’t we have Rogers in the U.K. or Germany? Why is Vodafone everywhere? Why is France Telecom everywhere?”
He does has a point. Having spent extensive amounts of time in countries such as the UK and Germany, I can say that wireless carriers there are out to provide the best service for the lowest price. That doesn’t happen in Canada. Also one suspects that if any of the “big three” set up shop anywhere else on planet Earth, they’d get their butts kicked due to the fact that they don’t know how to compete.
Now here’s the other side of the coin. What I suspect that Sawiris is doing is shaking things up prior to the upcoming government auction of wireless licenses so that he can slant things in his favor. It’s not what I’d do, but I’m a computer nerd and not a PR expert. And its worked as he’s now got the attention of the government as well as two of the “big three.” The real test is what happens the auction takes place though. Stay tuned for that next year.
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This entry was posted on November 18, 2011 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags 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.