Canada’s Mobile Landscape Flattens as “Wind Mobile” moves from Upstart to Incumbent. According to a press-release which was issued by the Calgary-based company, Shaw is the new owner of the Canada’s Wind Mobile.
Wind Mobile has a coverage of three Canadian provinces including a total of 940,000 subscribers in these provinces. In addition, this company is considered as the country’s fourth national carrier after Bell, Rogers, and Telus. Dating back to 2008 the Canadian government AWS-1 spectrum auction took place, and this facilitated the emergence of this carrier. Later in 2009, the Wind was launched. It has endured a tough time due to the level of competition against the so-called Big Three. Mobilicity and Public Mobile were the new entrants from that time and were purchased by Rogers and Telus in 2015 and 2013 respectively.
The acquisition of $1.6 billion enabled the Shaw Communications to operate on a wireless entity. It can be noted that this company had no wireless entity back then though it still operates under a large network of high-speed Wi-Fi hotspots in cities such as Calgary and Edmonton which can be termed as medium-sized. Shaw will supervise Wind Mobile’s transition from an HSPA+3G network to LTE, which is more modern than the previous. This will be facilitated by the 50Mhz of AWS-3 by which the company acquired in a spectrum auction.
The concern now lies on whether Wind Mobile will still maintain their balanced approach which involves moderately-priced monthly plans and also the financing options for the handset. Further, it is unclear whether Shaw will launch a separate Wind branding or decide to maintain the earlier Wind branding for all demographics. Well, he may or may not decide to launch a higher-priced brand to compete more favorably with Bell, Rogers, and Telus in the high-ARPU under the name “Shaw Mobile”. The Wind Mobile average revenue per user (ARPU) is $15 less than the incumbents’. This should not be the case as it can be seen over the past few years ARPU rising steadily.
On the flip side, Shaw has to wait for compatible devices with AWS-3 spectrum to launch in 2016. Shaw is quoted as saying that his company is better positioned to deliver better value and capability to her customers. More so, he claims that the company’s strength and as a brand will be vital in providing the Canadians with more options and also the opportunity for them to stay connected.
