TORONTO – It’s very hard to argue an organization does not represent you and your wishes when you are a paying member of that association. So after much behind-the-scenes bitterness wireless upstarts Wind Mobile, Public Mobile and Mobilicity this week quit the group, saying the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association has become co-opted by the big three wireless companies and does not represent the wishes of all of its membership.
Simon Lockie, chief regulatory officer at Globalive, Wind’s owner, said the trio of companies’ frustration with the CWTA, its public statements and private lobbying, has been simmering for months and reached a full boil recently.
“Obviously, the CWTA coming out quite forcefully in the code of conduct hearing in favour of three-year contract service terms along side the incumbents and no one else in the universe is one example and I was forced to address it in my written and oral submissions in the hearing saying they don’t speak for me,” Lockie said in an interview with Cartt.ca on Thursday.
“I was very strong and firm with (the association) going into that proceeding that it would be inappropriate for them to take any position against us and in favour of the incumbents and they should leave issues like that for us to fight out amongst ourselves and not take a side. I certainly don’t ask them to advocate positions that are important to me because there’s no way the incumbents would ever permit it to happen and I just expect that same courtesy.”
Some recent comments made by CWTA president and CEO Bernard Lord lend credence to Lockie’s complaints. In a December story in Cartt.ca, Lord addressed the differences of opinions and strategies of his membership and how he is able to navigate those sometimes choppy waters. Lord said then: “We don’t get involved in pricing issues, how they set pricing, how they build their networks. They do that on their own. Those things are not discussed at our executive or at our board or even in social meetings. It’s just not discussed.”
However, said Lockie, he believes Lord broke that principle during the wireless code of conduct hearing by arguing squarely in favour of three year contracts and against those members who felt differently. Of course, that said, Lord also said in the same interview with Cartt.ca that he believes there is nothing wrong with contracts of that length. “What I find odd is when I hear people say, ‘We need to eliminate this.’ Well, we’d be eliminating the most popular choice that Canadians individually select. It’s the one that Canadians pick. They can pick a two-year contract. They can pick a one-year contract. They can pick no contract at all,” Lord said.
Given Wind, Public and Mobilicity’s opposition to those contracts, there was little surprise in the February hearing that the companies and their association were on opposite sides of that fence.
Of late, however, Lockie has grown even more upset with how the CWTA insists regularly the Canadian wireless market is very competitive, when the three newcomers, each challenged by their tiny market share, clearly believe it is not. The CWTA often asserts to the federal and provincial governments that the market is competitive and nothing special needs to be done to change it. According to Lockie, the CWTA has been lobbying against the proposed consumer protection legislation in Ontario.
“I want there to be Ontario consumer protection legislation – and for (the CWTA) to be spending my money fighting against it is simply inappropriate,” Lockie said. “We withdrew… because of active position-taking and lobbying efforts that are directly contrary to our efforts and directly favourable to the incumbents interests and that’s exactly what I was promised would not happen.
“We have been put in the position several times to have to go against our industry association both in the media and in proceedings – and we also have to stand by and get these weekly reports on how they just met with the PMO or with Ontario and reinforced was a vigorously competitive market it is and how well-served Canadians are.”
The last straw for Lockie came when he read an Op-Ed piece contributed to Cartt.ca by the CWTA, authored by Lord. The piece was a strike back at some of the negative attacks on the Canadian wireless business by University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who has amassed quite a social media following among Canadian consumers. “I happened to be reading (the Op-Ed) at the same time I got my invoice from the CWTA… and I thought ‘you know what? This doesn’t make sense to me.’ I think the positions being taken by Bernard are absurd. I expect Telus to take those positions… but when you have independent journalists and academics like Peter Nowak and Michael Geist… why is an industry association taking a position on something that is so fundamental as the efficiency and concentration of spectrum holdings and all these very contentious matters?” asked Lockie.
So what now? Lockie noted that the CWTA does some things that the industry needs cohesion on and for someone to run centrally (like administering short codes, managing the handset database on the stolen phone file, running programs like recycle my Cell and the like), and he is still willing to co-operate on all those things, but not as a member of the existing association.
“It will be interesting for me to see what happens, given its position as an industry association is very different now than a couple of days ago,” Lockie explains. “I think there are interesting questions that EastLink and Vidéotron and Terago and even the incumbents have to ask themselves which is: ‘Given that it doesn’t speak for the industry any more, should I be subsidizing it as heavily as I am?.’”
So yes, a new association is something that just might be on the table. Back in 2008, Vidéotron and MTS formed a partnership apart from the CWTA called the Coalition for Wireless Competition before eventually joining the CWTA, and “that has a nice ring to it,” added Lockie. “We’re certainly aware of a lot of the benefits of being in a true industry association that sticks to the legitimate activities of an association, so we are looking very closely at the right way to do that and certainly Vidéotron, EastLink, SaskTel and for that matter the incumbents, would all be welcome in that association.
“When and if that association is formed and how it’s structured will only speak to issues that are reflective of true industry alignment. I think associations can serve a valuable position as a forum for healthy discussion and reaching compromises and so on, but that’s where it has to stop. It can’t move on to lobbying in favour of any specific subset interests and that would be an absolute defining characteristic of any new association that we form.”
Clearly, there’s more to come here.
