How did Public Mobile start out?

[Word-Nerd]

   How did Public Mobile start out?  

   There is not a lot of information about how the company began, why it was named Public Mobile, et cetera.

   The name seems to imply that it may have begun as some kind of local cooperative cellular phone service provider, which I have never heard of before. 

   A news article years ago about it's transition to Telus described it that way also.

   Am curious to know more.  Hopefully somebody, perhaps a current or former employee, can provide some insight into this great company and why it was named Public Mobile.

   Thanks in advance for any information anybody can provide.  It is appreciated.

[tzliu]

Public Mobile was incorporated in 2008 and officially started to use the name “Public Mobile” in 2009.

Public Mobile, along with Mobilicity and Wind Mobile, was launched to compete with the Big-3, and ironically it is now wholly owned by TELUS.

In November 2013, TELUS paid $250 million to acquire Public Mobile parent company, Public Mobile Holdings, from New York based private equity firm Cartesian Capital and Peter Thomson.

What happened to Mobilicity and Wind Mobile?

Rogers acquired Mobilicity in July 2015 for $443 million, and re-branded as ChatR

Wind Mobile, now Freedom Mobile, which remained as independent as long as it could possibly sustain in losses, was acquired by Shaw in March 2016 for an enterprise value of approximately $1.6 billion.

If the weakly Trudeau liberals not to intervene under the bully of Rogers, Freedom Mobile will be to sold to Videotron Ltd., a subsidiary of Quebecor, for $2.85 billion, as part of Shaw/Rogers merger.

[dandu3]

I'd put zoomer wireless or cityfone instead of chatr. I had never heard of public mobile before opening my account, and I had never heard of zoomer before my girlfriend signed up for their service lol. Most people have heard of chatr at some point tho. Lucky mobile is new tho, newer than fizz IIRC. Anyways, zoomer is really just Rogers,  but RCS chatting is completely broken and it's the usual no voLTE and such. 

And you get a free subscription to zoomer magazine woo!

[umnikke8]

Technically the company that would be called Public Mobile started in 2008 or earlier. Public was one of the 3 independent companies that ended up starting after the 2008 spectrum auction. The other two being Wind and Mobilicity. That auction had policies to encourage new entrants to spur competition. Of course the Big 3 did everything possible to thwart them and largely succeeded. Public was the first to be snapped up by Telus, then Mobilicity by Rogers and finally Wind was brought into Shaw and now looks like it will be largely offloaded to Videotron/Quebecor.

[softech]

@Word-Nerd   Many Tier 2 and Tier 3 providers are in fact once independent providers trying to fight the big guys.  Sadly, all of them failed, they eventually all acquired by the Big 3 in the end. 

Those new licenses were supposed to be "government initiative to encourage competition in the wireless sector."  Competition?  

BTW, Wind was NOT part of PM.  Wind rebranded as Freedom Mobile after acquired by Shaw in 2016 , and is at the major crossroad now

[Word-Nerd]

Public Mobile began on March 18, 2010 with stores in Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. Forty months later, in October 2013, it was bought by Telus, which shut down Canada’s last remaining CDMA network in August 2014. Telus converted Public Mobile into a MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) on August 8, 2014 and Telus “rebranded” it as “Canada’s cooperative wireless provider” on February 3, 2015.  On December 31, 2021, the company announced it was going to “revamp” it’s online customer forum.  The last time anybody updated the company’s Wikipedia page was April of 2019.

Here are links to the information sources :

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/teluss-decision-to-shut-public-mobile-angers-cons... : March 27, 2014 : PM had 280K customers then.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2015/02/03/telus-rebrands-public-mobile-as-canadas-cooperative-wireless-prov... : Feb. 3, 2015.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Mobile : April 2019 : Much of the information provided here is no longer accurate. Began on March 18, 2010, bought by Telus in October 2013, began operating as MVNO on August 8, 2014.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2021/12/31/public-mobile-to-revamp-its-online-customer-forum/

Public Mobile was chosen for my second phone and so far the service has been great.  If my current long term service provider doesn't offer me a better plan (when I call the company about this), Public Mobile will have that phone too.

[covid191]

@Word-Nerd Telus bought them out !

[CountyDownIeUk]

Gobbled up? or wisely purchased to allow Telus to supply a “ready made” service at lower rates as dictated by CTRC. 

[hTideGnow]

@Word-Nerd 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Mobile

I believe some members and Oracles can share their experiences with the early days of PM or the early days when Telus bought it.  I heard it was a much different company than now 

[Handy1]

@Word-Nerd @Good question I’m not sure if Telus bought out wind mobile and made it into pm 3rd tier service but I’ve been enjoying the company since 2018

[walker1]

@Word-Nerd 

It was an independent phone provider until it got gobbled up by the Telus corporation.

They wanted to have a third tier service provider, just like Bell has Lucky and Rogers has Chatr.