MONT TREMBLANT – Dean Prevost wasn’t speaking in front of the Canadian Club or the Empire Club like Ted Rogers and Pierre Karl Peladeau did last week, but his message today at the Canadian Cable Systems Alliance AGM followed the squabbling script:
Industry Canada’s advanced wireless spectrum auction rules have to favour newcomers somehow, so that Prevost’s company, MTS Allstream (like Peladeau’s Videotron), can become a national wireless provider.
Prevost, the chief corporate officer of the company, talked about wireless in other parts of the world, adding: “What’s different about the Canadian experience is the price is really, really high.”
Customers pay for roaming and long distance on their own network – not to mention $7 a month or so as a “system access fee”, all of which are “extinct in other parts of the world, he said, admitting that yes, the company also charges such things already of its 400,000 or so Manitoba wireless customers.
So Prevost is hopeful the industry will see auction rules in “maybe a couple of weeks,” he said, for an auction that will happen early in 2008.
Assuming MTS Allstream can win enough spectrum Prevost said the company will build a national wireless infrastructure, but “with a bias for wholesale to allow for white label,” he explained.
MTS Allstream is a supplier to many Canadian cable operators providing voice over IP and Prevost said he sees no reason why Canadian independent cablecos and MTS Allstream can’t partner on wireless, too.
“We bring the national network,” he said, while local cable operators bring the customer relationships.
“There might be a lot that we can do together.”
