Earlier this week, we heard that Verizon was looking to purchase WIND Mobile which is a carrier up in Canada. WIND Mobile only has about 600,000 subscribers which is about how many subscribers Verizon adds each day here in the US. Now when we first reported this on Monday, we immediately thought it was fault since Verizon is still owned by Vodafone and they aren’t allowed to buy Wireless services outside of the US. But Verizon’s CFO Fran Shammo spoke with the WSJ that Verizon is indeed taking a look at the Canadian market. Canada’s government relaxed its regulations last year to allow foreign ownership of telecom assets. Still, the largest US mobile carrier is somewhat concerned about what regulatory issues might pop up and has decided to move slowly.
Some thought that Verizon might be trying to establish themselves up north so they could be eligible for the spectrum bid in Canada and grow out the business by undercutting the price of Canadian operators. Which is the complete opposite of what Verizon does here in the US. So once Verizon gets the best coverage in Canada, they’ll probably raise their prices to be the most expensive, similarly to what they do here in the US.
Verizon’s Shammo did refuse to discuss any specific information between Verizon and WIND, Verizon is also said to have some other potential suitors including AT&T and Vodafone. Which we reported already that AT&T and Verizon were looking to team up to buy Vodafone. Where Verizon would buy Vodafone’s stake in Verizon back and AT&T would take over the carrier, moving into Europe and other parts of the world. Lately it seems like so many carriers are trying to buy each other out. Including MetroPCS and T-Mobile merging, Sprint being bought by Softbank, and I’m sure more are coming soon.