Wind Mobile moves to a position of strength after Rogers-Mobilicity deal

[Igster]

Yesterday, Rogers announced that it would purchase Mobilicity’s business, its debts and a portion of its AWS spectrum, for $440 million. Mobilicity will continue as a standalone operation for some time, but neither company is currently saying what will happen to the 150,000 or so subscribers still operating in each of the provider’s five markets.

But perhaps the biggest news coming out of the deal was that Wind Mobile practically doubled its spectrum holdings overnight. As part of the negotiations, Rogers agreed to sell (for an undisclosed price) a portion of Mobilicity’s AWS-1 spectrum to Wind. It will also transfer, as part of an option deal to purchase all of Shaw’s AWS-1 licenses, a portion of the Calgary-based company’s spectrum to Wind, as well.

http://mobilesyrup.com/2015/06/25/wi...y-rogers-deal/

[MrCallahan]

Interested to see where this goes! Really like Wind and what they are trying to do with mobile access in Canada. But their coverage and data access were pretty brutal for me (had no signal in my building at work, pretty much made my phone useless during the day), so I had to switch back to Bell after being on Wind for 6 months. Would be willing to give them another shot once they expand their coverage more, and implement LTE.

[RW99]

Just last month I left Rogers after 15 years (Nokia 5165 in da house). I was hoping to get WIND, but the coverage and data speed kept me away. I ended up back with Rogers (FIDO) which is at least a little bit better. If WIND can fix some of their issues I'll switch over. But I'm sure by then their prices will be the same

[FlameOn]

I'm still holding out for a Videotron-Wind merger to create a broad 4th entrant into the Canadian market. 700Mhz was the spectrum Wind wanted but the Russians screwed them of that. Now the two can merge and finally challenge the Robellus.