Rogers to shutdown Mobilicity - an opportunity for PM

[imm1304]

Hello everyone!

Just thought I put this message up for discussion on a rather chilly/snowy Toronto afternoon with not much else happening.

The big news in the mobile world this week is the announcement from Rogers that Mobilicity will be shut down, all customers will be moved Chatr.  Their current mobi plans will NOT be grandfathered.

The current Chatr "unlimited" data plan gives the first 1GB capped at 3Mbps followed by a painfully slow 2g connection for the rest of the month.  By comparison, our PM LTE speeds are more than 10 times faster on a consistent basis. 

I am thankful that PM stayed alive and evolved into a new brand after the Telus takeover. 

This may be a good chance for the fellow community members to get their friends/family to move from Mobilicity to PM.  

I think that buyout and elimination of small players is bad for us, the consumers and am sad to see one more company disappear from the mobile industry.  I hope PM can sense the opportunity here and work fast to pick up a good chunk of unhappy Mobi customers.  

[kav2001c]

In the USA there are at least 50 active MVNOs.

IN Canada there are 2 (and Rogers is taking Sugar Mobile to court trying to sue them out of existance).

Until government changes how Canadian carriers operate there is no incentive for innovation or competition.

Interestingly enough Telus (Public) is the brand that seems the least integrated now that Shaw took over Wind.

[ckl]

Just goes to show that Rogers doesn't really care about the Mobilicity brand or it's customers. They are only after the spectrum.

The problem with the wireless industry is that it is solely dependant on the spectrum. Whomever holds the most spectrum, holds the most power and dictate pricing. If the government was serious about competition, the only way to allow it is to remove the dependence, hence the value, on this resource. One way of doing it would be to introduce a spectrum cap. No single company or it's subsidiaries can hold more than a percentage of the total spectrum available. Or, open up the wireless networks so that new competition can piggyback off the incumbent networks at wholesale prices. What would be a fair wholesale price? Who knows? Maybe model the pricing on how it works with landline internet, or maybe look at how other countries are doing it.

At this point, the future of competition in the wireless industry is MVNO's. There is simply not enough available spectrum for a new competitor to do it from scratch. There needs to be a hybrid... part MVNO and part proprietary network. A new competitor would be mostly MVNO while it builds out it's own network. WIND would have done much better if they were allowed to do this.

Regardless, if history repeats itself, future spectrum auctions will continue to be gobbled up by the incumbents one way or another and we will continue with the high priced status quo.

[makkahn28]

I think that the Competition Bureau, Indust Can, CRTC and that CCRT should have made Rogers keep the Mobilicity brand, as Now I think we maybe stuck with only 3, Shaw with Wind, Not sure if Shaw can maintain the momentum, and if any Future Start-up Carriers disappear I can think that the Canadien Telecommunication sector will have fee problems, price increase's left and right, just look at the Cable TV thing, all tangled up, and almost impossible to untangle and correct.

Maybe what should be done is,  first dismantle everything, right down to the Frequency and spec, then rebuild with better foundations in place, with Crystal-clear rules and guidelines, and ensure that each Prov and Territory has 6-8 Players, and perhaps have at least ONE of them as a Crown-owned Corp, so as to maintain some semblance of balance, because right now, though I can't 100% complain about my services with PM, I worry for the nxt-Gen who will surely have a harder time just qualifying for the service either because fees are beyond their reach, or their credit is poor, and prepaids only go so far, unless there's a way to make the ideal Prepaid that has all of the bells, whistles and trimmings of Postpaid but under Prepaid banner.

What would happen if just for Talking services fees were like $60-$70 for like 200 Mins,Not including Txt or Data, I can already picture that scenario, or what if only %5-%10 of the population can even afford Services like phones, This has me concerned that the endgame is eventually going to pop into motion.

Similar to how the Housing market bubble burst occurred.

Just saying, Unless Carriers reform their perception and Usher in actual and genuine change, I fear that this will have an unhappy ending, not the fairy tale ending that we all yearn for.