Well, everyone's favourite Canadian Regulator, or should I say deregulator, the CRTC, has decided on their foreign ownership decision for Globalive. The decision, was that Globalive/Wind Mobile does not meet Canadian ownership rules.
Globalive is a Canadian company that participated in an auction last year for wireless spectrum to provide new competition in Canada. They got lots of money from an Egyptian company called Orascom. Before they started preparing for their wireless services, Industry Canada approved Globalive and Orascom's joint venture. They managed to get spectrum in all provinces except for Quebec, where Quebecor (Videotron) beat their bid. Globalive's wireless service is known as Wind Mobile.
A few months back, Telus requested that the CRTC do a foreign ownership check on Globalive. This is obviously because Telus, Bell, and Rogers fear competition as an alternative to their insanely overpriced services. Wind Mobile continued with their business, aiming to launch their services in late 2009/early 2010 since they were confident that the CRTC would allow them to continue operating in Canada. Today, the CRTC decided that they can't offer their wireless services.
Lately, the CRTC has proven to be useless as a regulator and almost always favour large businesses over small businesses and consumers. Even the FCC in the United States have been more useful than the CRTC. The other day, Jesse Brown from TVO had a podcast where he interviewed CRTC chairman, Konrad Von Finckenstein. Finckenstein says that Canadians are "internet hogs", he completely ignored the wants of thousands of Canadians, and claimed to have never heard of Harvard's recent study which shows that Canada has some of the slowest and most expensive internet on the planet. With the CRTC's latest decision, it is yet another reason to sign the petition to dissolve the CRTC. The goal for the petition is 10000 signatures.
Wind Mobile press release regarding the decision: http://www.windmobile.ca/WIND-news/detail/bad-day-canadians-and-wireless-competition-canada/
Mobile Syrup article: http://mobilesyrup.com/2009/10/29/crtc-globalive-does-not-meet-canadian-ownership-rules/
CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/10/29/crtc-globalive-wind-mobile-cellphone.html
Toronto Star article: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/718402--globalive-denied-wireless-entry
DSLReports article: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/CRTC-Blocks-Canadas-WIND-Wireless-Network-105241
Boingboing post summarizing Jesse Brown's interview: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/27/canadas-top-internet.html
Jesse Brown's podcast with the interview: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/searchengine/index.cfm?page_id=613&action=blog&subaction=viewPost&post_id=11263&blog_id=485
CBC article about Harvard's internet study: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/10/15/harvard-fcc-broadband-study.html
Dissolve The CRTC petition: http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/
EDIT #1: Added the Toronto Star link on the morning of Friday October 30th.
EDIT #2: Added the DSLreports link on Friday Evening.
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