Indsutry Canada today announced that its next spectrum auction will kick off on March 3, 2015. By the time the AWS-3 spectrum auction wraps up in May 2015, Industry Minister James Moore expects that the amount of spectrum available to provide mobile services to consumers will have grown by almost 60 percent since early 2014. By that point, new competitors […]
Spectrum auction
Deadline set for carriers to commit to AWS-3 spectrum auction
Industry Canada today held a technical briefing to explain some of the finer points of its recently announced Advanced Wireless Services-3 (AWS-3) spectrum auction. Consultation details were also published online, giving us a better understanding of how the auction will work. Industry Canada views the licensing of AWS-3 spectrum as an opportunity to release wireless spectrum to support investment and improve […]
Industry Canada announces AWS-3 spectrum auction
Industry Canada today announced that it will hold an AWS-3 spectrum auction ahead of the already announced 2500MHz one coming in 2015. This new auction will offer up 50MHz of paired spectrum and is “designed specifically to put Canadian consumers first.” In essence, the goverment is favouring smaller operators with this auction after most were shut out or did not […]
TELUS to be excluded from 2500MHz spectrum auction over Mobilicity acquisition attempts?
Mobilicity, the beleaguered Canadian carrier looking to sell itself, last week announced that it had found a buyer through an auction it ran in December 2013. It turned out that the knight in shining armour was none other than TELUS which had already tried to buy it out twice before. Both previous attempts had been rebuffed by Industry Canada over […]
Winners of Canada’s 700MHz spectrum auction announced
Canada kicked off its 700MHz spectrum auction on January 2014, 2014 with 10 participants after five fell out in the lead up, including WIND Mobile the day before the auction was set to start. Just over a month later, the auction has wrapped up and Industry Canada today announced the winners. After a total of 108 bidding rounds, 97 licenses […]
Reuters: Canada concludes 700MHz spectrum auction (Update: Confirmed)
Canada kicked off its 700MHz spectrum auction on January 14. It kicked off with 10 parties vying for the valuable spectrum after five others, including WIND Mobile, dropped out ahead of its start. With fewer participants, the auction had been expected to take less time but also possibly bring the government less revenues. Citing a number of unnamed sources, Reuters […]
Canada’s 700MHz spectrum auction kicks off today
Despite yesterday’s surprise that WIND Mobile had withdrawn from the 700MHz spectrum auction, the bidding for the new spectrum licenses, including four prime blocks of spectrum, in 14 Canadian regions got underway today. The 700MHz spectrum has been deemed particularly valuable because of its ability to travel further and through buildings more easily, thereby requiring less infrastructure. It it also […]
WIND Mobile drops out of 700MHz spectrum auction a day before start
A day before the start of Canada’s 700MHz spectrum auction, WIND Mobile announced that it had withdrawn from the auction, making it the fifth to bow out. The move was precipitated by parent company VimpelCom’s decision not to fund potential purchases by WIND Mobile. With the decision coming only hours before the start of the auction, WIND Mobile was unable […]