WEDNESDAY, THE BUSY AND informative Canadian Telecom Summit was wrapped up by a keynote speech from ISED Minister Navdeep Bains, where he announced a $10/month broadband program for low income Canadians and three key spectrum announcements which will help drive the future – 5G technology.
Just as I dashed off to talk to the minister in a media scrum, one of our more prescient readers grabbed me by the arm and said “Sprint and T-Mobile want to merge in order to get together and roll out 5G rather than do it on their own. Why don’t you ask him what he thinks of that in Canada?”
Cartt.ca likes being responsive to our readers, so I bumped his question to the top of our list for Minister Bains and so we present the unvarnished questions and answers to that topic here:
Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien: “Down south in the States, Sprint and T-Mobile are using 5G as a reason to combine the companies, so they’d be going from four big players in the States down to three (if allowed by government). Can you put what you might be thinking on that in a Canadian context if that sort of thing was tried here and what the government’s reaction would be?
Navdeep Bains: “It’s speculation. What we want to do is make sure is we have a proper plan when it comes to the deployment of spectrum… that we have the best quality networks, that’s why we presented the five-year outlook to provide predictability for businesses – and they will make the strategic decisions they need to in terms of mergers or acquisitions or what assets they’re going to acquire. We want to make sure we provide predictability.”
GOB: “Are you still committed to there being four players in every market? Will that be a guiding principle?”
NB: “The guiding principle for us is more competition and that’s why we had such a significant set aside for the 600 MHz (auction), of 43%, to demonstrate that we want strong regional players. We fundamentally believe that more competition will drive down prices so that’s what we’re focused on, more competition.”
Later Wednesday in a phone interview follow-up, we continued to pester Minister Bains on that topic:
GOB: “With 5G coming down the pipe over the next number of years, there are loads of moving parts, mini base stations, slicing spectrum, thousands of devices to be connected… Sprint and T-Mobile have said part of the reason they want to come together is that the 5G investment and build will be better together.
“So, what if a Canadian company, say Rogers, wanted to buy Eastlink, or Bell to buy Sasktel, or if even bigger deals are proposed, what’s the government’s response going to be? Are you committed to that number of four (wireless providers) all across the country?”
NB: “As I said earlier and this is really the lens we look through is we want to see more competition and clearly for us we’ve noticed in areas like Manitoba and Saskatchewan where there are regional players, that consumers pay less. And so this is about the correllation between more competition and the fact that Canadians end up paying less where there is more competition.”
GOB: “Does that mean you’re likely to say no to any sort of proposed merger?”
NB: “Well as you know, that’s hypothetical and so it’s tough to comment on a specific hypothetical until we see the details, but from our point of view the reason why we have the set aside, for example, in the 600 MHz (auction), was to promote more competition with more retail players and we think that model will help us drive down prices.”
GOB: “I noticed in the terms of reference in the Telecom, Radiocom, Broadcasting Acts review it says in there the government is not interested in a proposal that reduces Canadian ownership levels in broadcasting, but it doesn’t say the same sort of thing for telecom, so is (more foreign ownership of telecom) something you would be open to in that review?”
NB: “What we want to see is exactly what the terms of reference say – we want to see what options exist, and the way this would work is there would be the full recommendations that would come into play most likely early 2020…”
Then, later in our conversation:
GOB: “Certainly with foreign ownership, that goes back to what you were talking about with competition, where if there were more opportunities for other companies to come in to Canada perhaps, that might promote increased competition, too.”
NB: “That could be a possible set of recommendations that the panel could come forward with so I don’t want to pre judge their work, but they definitely have a scope to look at what tools we have to reduce prices for consumers, so I look forward to hearing back from them directly on this.”
GOB: “Anything specific you’re hoping for (from the Acts’ review)?”
NB: “Lower prices for Canadians, period.”
