There’s a report coming out of Bloombergtoday, that WIND Mobile has made a bid for Mobilicity in the sum of $190 million. Mobilicity is currently auctioning off their spectrum and subscriber base to the highest bidder. Now that deadline was this past Monday at noon, but to-date there’s been no word on the complete list of bidders. There had been previous reports of WIND Mobile “currently reviewing the assets” and “investigating what will be most beneficial to us long term.” The partnership would make sense and has been something WIND Mobile has attempted before. Bloomberg is reporting that “a person with knowledge of the matter” says that WIND Mobile has submitted a bid for Mobilicity’s assets that is approximately $190 million, that’s only half of the bid TELUS made last June which was rejected.
So far, Mobilicity has declined to comment on the matter. However, Mobilicity spokesman Nick Anstett did state that the review of all offers is ongoing and a decision could happen in the next “several weeks”. It’s expected that Mobilicity will end 2013 with 175,000 subscribers, while WIND Mobile has about 640,000 active subscribers. That’s quite the difference in subscribers. But WIND Mobile taking over Mobilicity could help them catch up to the Big 3’s numbers, that’s TELUS, Rogers and Bell.
It’ll be interesting to see if this actually goes through. Since I’m not from Canada, I don’t know the likely hood of this deal going through, or if there will be a lot of red tape. I know here in the US the FCC would probably stop it, a good example is AT&T trying to buy T-Mobile back in 2011. Which failed, due to the FCC. So will the same thing happen in Canada? We’ll have to wait and see. What do all of you think? Let us know in the comments below.