The qualifying round is over and now Industry Canada has sifted through the applications and reduced the field from 30 down to 27 [the official list of qualified bidders can be found here].
Eliminations could have resulted from any number of defects in the applications that were unable to be cured over the past two weeks. Many, I suspect, were due to failures in coming up with the appropriate form of deposit.
Canadian consumers are clearly going to see increased choice for wireless services, whether in major cities or in many rural areas that seem to be attracting specialized regional players.
On a national level, at least 3 of the bidding groups have substantial funders behind them: Data & Audio Visual Enterprises (DAVE) Wireless has enough points to assemble 10 MHz nationwide with spare points to increase its bandwidth to 20MHz for half of the country’s population. DAVE is a venture controlled by XM Canada’s John Bitove with funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital.
I continue to see Sasktel to be a likely partner in all of the national alliances thanks to the anomaly in the AWS rules that defines them to be a ‘new entrant’ despite their overwhelmingly dominant position in the Saskatchewan marketplace.
What happened to Niagara Networks, the company it seems everyone had been speculating about for the past two weeks? For all the previous talk, it appears their cheque didn’t clear.
Update [March 31, 10:20 pm]
As we review the pages describing each bidder, it appears that some of the qualified bidders are going to need to rework their business plans.
Triple Five Universal Enterprises, currently 100% owned by Nader Ghermezian, has had a significant change from the time of the original application. Two weeks ago, Triple Five asked for 1240 bid points, sufficient for 20 MHz in every part of Canada. However, it has only qualified for a fraction of that, 280 points or 10 MHz for a little less than half the national population.
Golden Spike, a company that appears to be partly owned by former 360 Networks CTO Steve Baker, also came up short. Its original application called for 384 points for $23.8 M, but it only qualified for 12 points, the equivalent of enough to bid for 20 MHz in Regina.