VANCOUVER – Telus has decided not to try and buy Bell Canada after all right now – and it will re-revise its official opinion on the advanced wireless spectrum auction.
After less than a week of angst and speculation and polls and Telus CEO Darren Entwistle attempting to sell such a merger to the country as a "Canadian strategy" the company announced this morning that it has elected not to submit an offer to acquire BCE by the 9 a.m. deadline this morning.
"The inadequacies of BCE’s bid process did not make it possible for Telus to submit an offer," says a company press release this morning.
Despite the fact that Telus CEO Darren Entwistle did the rounds Monday with various Toronto newspapers trying to push the merits of the deal, sometime between meeting reporters and editors on Monday and the Tuesday at 9 a.m. deadline, Telus changed its mind.
Perhaps the Telus board of directors got cold feet. Perhaps the rules set by BCE and the unusually tight deadlines simply scared Telus off at the last minute. Beyond the terse press release, the company isn’t saying.
What it will say is that an unfettered advanced wireless spectrum auction is now really the way to go.
When trying to sell the plan to Canadians just five days ago, Entwistle promised that a combined Bell and Telus would be in favour of the federal government setting aside spectrum or putting spectrum caps in place for the upcoming AWS auction, in order to facilitate the entry of at least one other wireless telephony operator.
Now, after deciding not to pursue BCE at this time, Telus vice-president wireless, broadband and content policy Michael Hennessy told Cartt.ca to expect the company to reclaim its past position that caps and set asides and mandated roaming – all of which would be restrictions on the incumbent big three wireless providers – is a very bad idea.
We’ll know for sure the ultimate positions of the wireless parties tomorrow when final comments to Industry Canada on what the rules surrounding the auction will be are due.
– Greg O’Brien
