Blang!

If it wasn’t already obvious how badly Canada needs to lift it’s foreign ownership rules, this week, the Toronto Star is reporting that Telus has demanded that the CRTC re-examine how much foreign ownership there really is in new wireless entrant Globealive.

The ILEC’s know that there is no Canadian owned company that could afford to build a new wireless network big enough to compete and that’s why Telus is raising a red flag over Globalive. It well knows that no foreign company would pour hundreds of millions of dollars into building a wireless network it doesn’t own and my hunch is that Telus is right. There is something fishy going on there and the government should do something about it. It’s just that what I think the government should do isn’t what Telus wants.

Lets lift these ridiculous foreign ownership restrictions once and for all and get on with finally building a better, more cost effective network. If Globalive really is pulling a fast one with foreign money, then it isn’t fair to the other new wireless entrants who are playing by a stricter set of rules.

It’s also worth noting that the Canadian wireless spectrum auction that generated so much more money than expected, did so because foreign companies bid the prices up so high. If Canada really wants to get “fair market value” for it’s wireless spectrum, then by definition it needs to have a fair market. That means a market that isn’t artificially restricted by outdated ownership rules and where competition drives prices down so us Canadians get to use our public airwaves at a reasonable price.