Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Canada and mobiles/wireless

An interesting report today that the Canadian Government is considering reducing the restrictions on foreign ownership of telcos.

The article neatly points out how the current ownership limit would impede new entrants into the market. The discussion has some relevance to the yet to be undertaken (or revealed) analysis of competition limits to apply to the Australian Digital Dividend spectrum auction.

I don't know the Canadian market well enough to comment, but from the Australian market perspective "smaller providers" are no longer a reasonable goal. What works is national licences, and few of them.

It is also hard to believe any market still has a foreign ownership restriction on mobile licences. The trend is even towards reducing that requirement on fixed licences.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

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