Not that I’m shocked by this, but The Toronto Star noted that Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed made this comment about Verizon potentially coming to Canada during an analyst call after releasing some pretty good numbers for the second quarter earlier in the day:
“What we’re absolutely against is a tilted or stacked playing field where you have a massive incumbent U.S. carrier that would be given favourable treatment, and frankly better treatment than Canadian incumbents,” Mohamed said Wednesday.
He also went on to say this:
“I’ve never seen how a four-player market can work in a country like Canada,” Mohamed said, noting Canada’s “geographic expanse.”
“I’ve never thought of it as a sustainable model. If you think of what has happened in Canada consistently over a period of time, it has been proven out that in this country it’s difficult enough, frankly, to work with three players.”
I’m pretty sure that Canadian cell phone users would disagree with his sentiments.
As frequent readers will know, I am all for a big foreign telco coming in and setting up shop in Canada as competition is good. It makes all concerned more efficient and brings better prices and better service to the marketplace. Those are things that are desperately needed in Canada. So if Verizon brings all of that, that’s a good thing. Another thing to point out, there’s more than three players in the cell phone space in Canada as Wind Mobile, Public Mobile, and Mobilicity will tell you. The difference is that they are unable to compete with Rogers, Bell or Telus. So his comments sort of imply that competition is fine as long as it’s weak. I’m not sure that’s the message that he intended to send. But if you look at the comments in the Toronto Star story, that’s the message that people are hearing.
In any case, the fact that Telus and now Rogers have made similar comments about Verizon implies that they’re really concerned that Verizon will take their breakfast lunch and dinner from them. My advice to them is that rather than complain, they should prepare for Verizon’s entry and adapt accordingly. Otherwise, they’ll cease to exist if and when Verizon shows up.
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This entry was posted on July 24, 2013 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Rogers CEO Not A Fan Of Verizon Coming To Canada
Not that I’m shocked by this, but The Toronto Star noted that Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed made this comment about Verizon potentially coming to Canada during an analyst call after releasing some pretty good numbers for the second quarter earlier in the day:
“What we’re absolutely against is a tilted or stacked playing field where you have a massive incumbent U.S. carrier that would be given favourable treatment, and frankly better treatment than Canadian incumbents,” Mohamed said Wednesday.
He also went on to say this:
“I’ve never seen how a four-player market can work in a country like Canada,” Mohamed said, noting Canada’s “geographic expanse.”
“I’ve never thought of it as a sustainable model. If you think of what has happened in Canada consistently over a period of time, it has been proven out that in this country it’s difficult enough, frankly, to work with three players.”
I’m pretty sure that Canadian cell phone users would disagree with his sentiments.
As frequent readers will know, I am all for a big foreign telco coming in and setting up shop in Canada as competition is good. It makes all concerned more efficient and brings better prices and better service to the marketplace. Those are things that are desperately needed in Canada. So if Verizon brings all of that, that’s a good thing. Another thing to point out, there’s more than three players in the cell phone space in Canada as Wind Mobile, Public Mobile, and Mobilicity will tell you. The difference is that they are unable to compete with Rogers, Bell or Telus. So his comments sort of imply that competition is fine as long as it’s weak. I’m not sure that’s the message that he intended to send. But if you look at the comments in the Toronto Star story, that’s the message that people are hearing.
In any case, the fact that Telus and now Rogers have made similar comments about Verizon implies that they’re really concerned that Verizon will take their breakfast lunch and dinner from them. My advice to them is that rather than complain, they should prepare for Verizon’s entry and adapt accordingly. Otherwise, they’ll cease to exist if and when Verizon shows up.
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This entry was posted on July 24, 2013 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Rogers. 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.