Thread | Brutkey

Good one: minister in 2008 promises Telus it will be able to acquire set-aside spectrum from a new entrant in 5 years, so during the 2007/2008 AWS main auction it was less aggressive in acquiring the more expensive incumbent spectrum. But come 5 years, government reversed its decision to prevent Telus from getting Mobilicity. (after allowing Rogers to buy Shaw's never deployed spectrum). But it shows Telus knew the new entrants would fail and their cheap spectrum become available in 5 years.

Daniel AJ Sokolov
@newstik@social.heise.de

@jfmezei@mstdn.ca I think one of the reasons new entrants keep failing is that incumbents are allowed price discrimination by area code.

Result: Wherever a new entrant starts his network, the incumbents will temporarily reduce prices to kill competition, while keeping prices high elsewhere. That way, they can cross subsidize their anti competitive behaviour.

The regulator CRTC doesn't care.

Jean-Francois Mezei
@jfmezei@mstdn.ca

@newstik@social.heise.de in fairness, the CRTC was told by Industry Canada that 4 carriers represents sufficient competition AND to protect the 4 carriers by not allowing new competition in (no MVNO for instance). Because it is officially considered there is sufficient retail competition 2ih 4 amigos oligopoly (really 3.5), CRTC does not have justification to regulate retail services.

Of the two remaining new entrants of 2007 (Vidéotron and Eastlink), they were promised, in exchange for their investment that the 4 carrier policy would protect them. Cogeco recently found a way to get into the game within its own cable footprint. We'll have to see how far they go with it.