Jeff Fan at UBS released his interpretation of Industry Canada’s clarifications from last Wednesday evening. The document was released in response to questions following the initial AWS spectrum policy release last November.
Bottom line:
We believe this is a net positive for the incumbents, especially for Rogers, because the clarified rules are not as favourable to new entrants as previously feared.
The main reasons cited by UBS are:
- Mandated roaming does not include resale: Industry Canada will not require resale of services outside of a new entrant’s licensed area;
- New entrants need to build network before launching service: A new entrant must offer service on its own network before its subscribers may benefit from roaming on another network;
- No requirement for seamless handoff: Calls in progress that are transferring from a new entrant’s own network to a roaming network may drop and have to be re-launched, leading to enormous frustration among the customers of new entrants;
The Industry Canada Q&A; is reasonably readable and can be found here [pdf]. The UBS analysis explains the winners and losers from the answers found in that paper.