Wind Mobility

[GordonH]

http://www.castanet.net/news/Business/1 ... -Global-TV

Shaw is selling Global TV to get into cellphone business.

Added later: I would expect an agreement between newly acquired Wind Mobility & Rogers to used their towers.
Since Wind currently only has towers in southern Ontario, Edmonton, Calgary & Vancouver (Whistler)

[cliffdiving]

So why did it take Shaw so long to jump on the cell wagon??? Did they have a 'you stay outta my back yard and I'll stay outta yours' agreement with Rogers for all these years?

[GordonH]

^^^ For Wind Mobility to succeed they are going to need far better cell tower coverage then they have now, check the link below. This is Wind's cell tower locations
http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/canc ... s=o&pid=33

So they will need agreement with Rogers, just as Bell & Telus have agreement.

Added: for those with smartphone this plan of Wind's sound pretty good: https://www.windmobile.ca/plans-and-dev ... ne-plan-50

[HP]

So why did it take Shaw so long to jump on the cell wagon??

Shaw was on the cell bandwagon a while back when it bought wireless spectrum in the AWS-3 auction in 2008. They announced plans to become a national cell carrier. They shut down their cell plans in 2011 and sold their spectrum to Rogers in 2013 ish. No announcement as to why but I suspect they simply weren't ready. A business needs to tool up to provide cell service. In the mean time they've been putting those annoying Wi-Fi hotspots on every business service (I'd still like somebody to explain to me how those hotspots make them any money).

Now they decided that they need to be back in the Cellular game so they bought Wind. This doesn't really make them a national player - it makes Shaw something more like a player with a national footprint in some regional markets.

For Wind Mobility to succeed they are going to need far better cell tower coverage then they have now, check the link below. This is Wind's cell tower locations

Towers are one thing and only a part of the investment in a larger footprint. Wireless spectrum is sold regionally in Canada. For Wind whose market entry was clearly based on a much different market demographic than enterprise, it made a lot of sense to limit their spectrum purchases to the regions where they wanted to do business as opposed to buying spectrum in every region of the country. My point is that adding towers is all fine and well but without the spectrum, Shaw is going to be in tough. They sold their spectrum to Rogers (as mentioned above) so they have to go back to auction for spectrum that will provide a national footprint.

To top it all off, Shaw now decides to sell Global to pay for their mobility play. Didn't they just invest a ton of money into Global (and business effort and and and)? There are huge costs associated with absorbing another business the way Shaw was doing with Global.

So, let's get this straight:
Shaw decides to enter mobility world and buys spectrum
Shaw decides not to enter mobility world but enter WiFi world so they sell their mobility spectrum
Shaw decides to buy Global because 'content is king'
Shaw decides to buy their way into mobility game
Shaw can't afford mobility game so they need to sell their content assets
Shaw can't create a national footprint because they don't have national spectrum

To me, this looks like a business that either (a) doesn't have a plan or (b) is reacting poorly to competitive pressures. Either way, Shaw has a long road ahead. They'll be fine because they have size working in their favour but it's just sort of a head scratcher to me. I think investors in Shaw have the right to ask some very serious questions of their corporate leadership.

[cliffdiving]

I remember something going on between Shaw and Rogers years ago. I think the rumor was that if Shaw ventured into the cell market then Rogers was going to move west with cable tv. So Shaw tucked tale... anyways, should be interesting!

[Loed]

Shaw is moving assets around nothing more. Corus Entertainment is basically a Shaw satellite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corus_Entertainment

They are likely gearing up to be acquired or merge with someone like Rogers or something from down south in the next few years.

It's just a sound business decision by them(obviously, since they went forward with it). Shaw shouldn't be trying to do anything more than provide services.

[GordonH]

Like I've said in my other post, for smartphone owners some of Winds plans sound very good. Of course I believe they currently piggyback on Telus towers (looked into Winds coverage since my pervious post).
Once this purchased is done and since Telus & Shaw don't do business with each other, Wind customers could see a drop in cell tower coverage with Rogers (Shaw & Rogers are like Bell & Telus).

I was Rogers customer found to many dead-zones in the Valley, so moved over to Telus have not had that problem.

Added later: Don't believe Wind has an outlet/store in area.