Does Canada really need another National mobile carrier?

Last night Tony Lacavera (Chairman & CEO of Globalive) fulfilled his promise from a year ago and presented an updated perspective on the mobile industry in Canada and an update on his own mobile wireless project at Mobile Monday Toronto.

A lot has changed in a year – although his story and perspective really hasn’t. Tony’s favorite slide is a graph demonstrating the regional mobile duopolies in Canada that effectively show that in nearly every region 90% of the market share is controlled by 2 carriers.  Because of this, pricing from the major carriers have largely stabilized resulting in Canadians paying the third highest cell phone bills in the world.

This is the reason why he believes Canadians need a third true alternative in order to create competition and deliver a better overall value and experience from consumers. This is the reason why he believes his mobile brand WIND will do so well. After all, WIND will offer:

• Unlimited plans
• No contracts
• No hidden fees
• No catches

Additionally, Tony has stated his platform will be open and come with wifi partnerships already in place. He’ll allow person to person mobile top ups, offer the most current blackberries (although no iphone to start) and is focusing next on mobile payments, international money transfers, mobile advertising and near field communications (NFC).

There’s just one catch – the CRTC has ruled that they cannot launch in Canada due to foreign ownership issues around control and debt.

The CRTC recently exercised its subjective discretion to reverse the finding that was previously made by both industry Canada and the Department of Justice. This means that despite all the investment and ramping up, WIND mobile is effectively still-born. You can read more about the decision here.

Tony is confident they can still find a resolution to get the CRTC’s approval and in the mean time his staff has been sent out into the community for random acts of kindness to keep them busy – such as helping at the daily food bank.

Having said all that – do we really need a third major competitor in each market?

Although Tony’s chart was updated from a year ago (which showed 2006 numbers) to reflect the market reality of 2008 – it doesn’t really show the impact the iphone has made to Rogers in other regions in the last year.  The iphone as we know transcends carrier loyalty and has impacted the competitive landscape in regions where Rogers has been traditionally more passive.  As Tony outlined, carriers have traditionally been passive in other regions where they don’t dominate in order to keep reciprocal actions out of the markets they control. The iphone changed all that.

The other major news from a year ago is that Telus and Bell launched their new HSPA high speed 3.5 G network that now competes or bests Rogers across the country in terms of 3G access and overall speeds.  Because their new network is GSM based – they too can sell the iphone.

Recent public squabbles between Rogers, Telus and Bell about claims of who is better and who is faster certainly doesn’t make it sound like we are living in a Country with no competition or where the regional duopolies are complacent.

Although I hope all the best for WIND and look forward to them eventually entering the market, the conditions have changed from a year ago and regardless if we have 2 or 3 real choices in our local market, it looks like Canadians finally have real choice and options when it comes to plans, devices, and networks.

I’m wondering (and hoping) that Tony comes back again this time next year at MoMo Toronto with his favorite graph – updated to either prove he was right all along or that Canadian’s are actually doing just fine with two real major choices in each market.