Globalive mobile looking to yak over flanker brands

“Yak” has many connotations – some more positive than others.

What yak mobile will mean to Canadians this time next year when they go to market nationally (minus Quebec) has equally as many possible implications for consumers and the mobile market.

CEO Tony Lacavera of Globalive Communications Corp. (who own yak) presented an overview of their vision and market strategy this week at Mobile Monday.  Here are some highlights and what they may mean to you and to the competitive market:

• They bought enough spectrum nationally to reach 25 million Canadians – but have set a short term goal of 1.5 million customers. They are going to initially focus on their own yak long distance customers (who are mostly middle-aged women), so don’t expect them to compete with the big 3 on their own turf
• They aren’t expecting Bell, Rogers, and Telus to make it easy on them to use their cell towers as mandated by the CRTC and they expect it will take a while to create network infrastructure that can compete with the big 3 for reliability.  Look for them to make deals with other spectrum winners (like Shaw and Videotron) and MVNOs as a way to fill some infrastructure and / or service gaps
• They are going to be GSM based in the AWS spectrum.  This means you should have more choice of devices to either bring over to them or to buy then if you were on Bell or Telus
• They expect that mobile penetration in Canada will be as high as 93% in three years and they hope to have about 8% market share – or enough to survive / hang on until 2012 when the next spectrum auction is expected to occur for the powerful 700 mhz range
• They will leverage big box and other major retailers primarily for distribution. This will make it easier for consumers buy and try yak mobile before fully committing to them. This is common practice in other countries like Italy and Greece where there is heavy penetration (100%+). With pay as you go programs, it’s not uncommon for consumers to carry multiple Sim cards
• Yak’s pending arrival has already impacted other flanker brands such as fido, solo, and koodoo as they are all repositioning themselves to be more competitive and in line with other international standards (like dropping system access fees, 12 month roll over minutes etc…)

yak mobile (or whatever they end up branding themselves) may not be the giant killer many consumers are hoping for, but they are the first of 4 new entrants that promises to restore the Canadian market to competitive levels not seen since 2000-2002 before the last wave of new entrants were bought out by Rogers and Telus