Jean-Francois Mezei@jfmezei@mstdn.ca
Context: Govt having blocked Telus-Mobilicity transaction, Mobilicity went CCAA and CCAA judge wanted to force the transfer of spectrum which minister had refused...
343. Ministry employees, together with senior political personnel from the Minister’s Office such as Nicholson and Jessica Fletcher, the Minister’s Director of Communications (“Fletcher”), strategically leaked a story to the Globe & Mail national newspaper. The purpose of the manufactured and planted story, attributed to an anonymous “senior government official”, was to threaten TELUS and any other incumbent bidder for Mobilicity and its spectrum licences.
344. The threat was clear: if TELUS or either of the other two Incumbents continued to pursue the Mobilicity spectrum licences, the Government would exclude them from the then upcoming 2500 MHz spectrum auction, which, to the knowledge of the Government, was critical to TELUS.
Dirty tricks in government are not as rare as we thought.
#CRTC
Jean-Francois Mezei@jfmezei@mstdn.ca
Correction on previous posts:
Rogers offered to buy Shaw's original AWS spectrum in 2013, pending expiration of 5 year moratorium .
Government immediatly changed policy to ignore the 5 year sunset on prohibituion of such transactions. (impacting Telus buying Mobilicity and sending later into CCAA).
Early 2015: Spectrum auction for 700MHz, AWS-3 and 2500 MHz resulted in remaining new entrants having 25% of spectrum in Canada, and the minister then declared mission accomplished and removed the band that had been indefinitely extended beyond contracted 5 years.
Mobilicity entertained bids with Rogers-Telus bidding against each other. Rogers won with $465m. (blocked Telus-Mobilicity in 2013 was $380m).
Rogers puchased Mobilicity and Shaw's AWS spectrum but with convoluted spectrum exchanges with Wind.
(Shaw would eventually buy Wind to save it from bankruptcy).
So the Rogers-Shaw was NOT approved prior to minister changing rules to ban Telus-Mobilicity,
