By Greg O’Brien
MONTREAL – Calling the wireless market in Quebec “crazy” and saying the company will have good news to report when it announces its next quarterly results, Videotron president and CEO Jean-Francois Pruneau (above) insisted all competitive options remain on the table for the Quebecor-owned ISP/cableco/wireless operator.
He believes the company is emerging well from the pandemic and capturing most of the pent-up demand that was tamped down in the province during the lockdowns where Quebecers couldn’t go out and shop for a new wireless provider.
“We were able to capture that pent up demand, I would say better than our competitors,” Pruneau said during Tuesday’s BMO Media and Telecom conference, noting a strong uptick in sales as people were able to get out. “On the mobile side… I would say the market is definitely crazy… I think our numbers in Q2 were so good and numbers from our competitors were not that good, so I hate to call it some sort of panic, but… the market is very, very aggressive on the mobile side.”
Pruneau didn’t specify the deep discounts or who was offering them, but he noted “terrible” prices on iPhone 11s for example which distort the market, adding “our objective in the quarter was not to follow them, to be more on the prudent side in terms of pricing.”
That said, Pruneau said later in his appearance at the virtual conference something his competitors might think “crazy.” While insisting the company does not want to build a national wireless network, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that its low-cost BYOD flanker brand fizz could go national as an MVNO outside Quebec, if it can come to a deal with one of the incumbents.
“We will not start a company from the ground up, that’s not the plan,” he said, “but is there any way for us to… use Fizz as a tool to get outside Quebec and strike an MVNO deal with one of the operators? Why not?
“I think we can not close the door to that, but the bite is still big in Quebec, to be honest.”
Of course, if the CRTC mandates access to incumbent wireless networks for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) with its new wireless policies many believe will be announced this fall, that surely could be a way for Pruneau to strike a deal.
