Earlier today, Industry Canada warned us about “an important announcement” that was released at 4:00 pm today.
The full rules were announced in front of a banner claiming “Putting Consumers First”.
For the major incumbents, the government nearly completely rejected their arguments against a spectrum set-aside, against tower sharing and mandated roaming. 40 MHz of the total 105 MHz will be set-aside for new entrants. The 40 MHz could yield 3 new carriers since it is divided into 14 provincial blocks of 20 MHz each, 14 blocks of 10 MHz each and 59 regional blocks of 10 MHz.
Even the definition of new entrants runs against what the incumbents might have hoped:
An entity, including affiliates and associated entities, which holds less than 10 percent of the national wireless market based on revenue.
That definition allows current incumbents MTS and Sasktel to bid as new entrants, but will keep Bell from bidding on spectrum in Manitoba, despite the fact that Bell owns no spectrum there and MTS enjoys a 60% market share within the province.
No liberalization of foreign ownership rules, so we’ll wait to see how potential new entrants raise sufficient capital to bid on the spectrum, let alone build out their networks.
The mandated roaming rules are pretty generous as well – we’ll comment further over the coming days.
The complete 19 page book of spectrum rules can be found here.
Technorati Tags:
AWS, spectrum auction