Two Canadian auction winners could form national network

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the Canadian spectrum auction, which ended in July. That’s mainly because the government imposed a “quit period,” in which the participants could not discuss their plans for the spectrum. Now, though, with the embargo lifted last night, we’re seeing news, via Wojtek Dabrowski, that two of the participants could be ready for a merger. This would give the resulting entity enough spectrum to create a fourth national carrier in Canada. This has to be considered a victory, since the aim of the auction was to bring new competition to the country.

In the auction, Globalive nabbed spectrum in nearly all parts of Canada. Except for Quebec, of course, which is why the partnership with Quebecor makes sense. The latter bid on licenses only in its home spectrum. That strategy seems to be paying off.

Canada was thrown into a tizzy earlier this week, when Bell and Telus announced a partnership which would allow them to share the costs of upgrading to high-speed packet access (HSPA), a GSM technology. This stems back to earlier rumors we heard about the companies thinking of switching to GSM.

Hopefully, the Globalive/Quebecor partnership goes with GSM. In fact, it’s hard to conceive of them not going that route. This, along with the Bell/Telus upgrade, would put more pressure on Rogers, and hopefully reduce cellular data rates which have plagued Canadian customers for years. They’ve gotten better, but they’re still not there. Could this be the first step in the right direction?

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