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.

On 21 January 2009, the CRTC received an application by l’Union des consommateurs (l’Union) requesting the Commission to intervene in the wireless services market to regulate billing of text messages from short codes – which is what marketers use for SMS / mobile marketing campaigns.

Based on the filings by Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) and members, the Commission has denied the application.

“In this decision, the Commission denies the application by l’Union des consommateurs requesting the Commission to intervene in the wireless services market to regulate billing of text messages from short codes.”

In concluding, the Commission affirmed CWTA’s position, namely:

1. The Commission considers that the evidence presented by l’Union does not lead to the conclusion that market forces have systematically failed to resolve complaints about billing of text messages from short codes.
2. The Commission is of the view that it can rely on market forces,(2) including industry self-regulation through the mechanisms put in place by the CWTA and the CCTS, to resolve complaints about billing of text messages from short codes.

Full text of the Decision is available at http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-445.htm

This is good news for mobile marketers who rely on SMS as part of their marketing efforts. Having the CRTC step in & regulate short codes would have likely slowed down and further complicated a process that is already perceived to be complex.

“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

Once upon a time, direct mail was the most cost effective way for national customer acquisition campaigns.

Rising postal and production costs drove many marketers to telemarketing.

Thanks to VOIP and off-shore outsourcing, it was possible to achieve better ROI by calling every household in Canada a few times a year from India then to send direct mail pieces.

All that is about to change again.  

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