With new entrant wireless carriers scrounging for capital, some incumbents seem to be trash talking their business opportunities in the Canadian wireless industry.
At CIBC’s Whistler Investor Conference, TELUS’ CFO Bob McFarlane poked fun at the willingness of investors to put money into a wireless start-up. [You can listen to the webcast here. His comments about investing in AWS can be found around the 11:00 minute mark. Listen to the interview and see if you pick up any other signals.]
Bill Linton of Rogers spoke at the same conference [available here] of how tough a business case it will be for new entrants, even as he told the attendees of expectations of continued growth for Rogers.
An article about the Friday session quotes McFarlane talking about a general retreat in wireless spending, reflected by the lower average revenue per user being reported by most carriers in the 4th quarter. He is quoted in the story as saying that this is not just due to the general economic pullback, but can be attributed to reductions in voice pricing.
Long term industry observers also recognize that 4th quarter ARPU is often down from 3rd quarter. Look at Rogers’ results from a year ago and you can see that 4th quarter ARPU declined by $2 compared to their 3rd quarter. After all, business activity typically declines in the last few weeks of the year so there would be a significant seasonality.
It seems a strange strategy to play down opportunities in your core growth sector. Maybe the investor relations strategy is to try to make fund raising more difficult for new entrants.