Quote:
Originally Posted by DRNewcomb
(Fido) folded and was bought by the other GSM carrier, Rogers
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I'm not sure they "folded" but yes, they were bought out by Rogers. Similarly Clearnet was the CDMA price leader until they were bought out by Telus. One strategy for a new entrant is to grow in urban markets until they too are bought out by an incumbent.
BTW a new entrant would be crazy to
not use GSM. Indeed, Bell and Telus are at such a disadvantage to Rogers because they're still on CDMA that they both now offer a "World" BlackBerry that has CDMA plus quadband GSM so that their lucrative business users will stay with them but still be able to use their phones when travelling outside of Canada. I'm sure that if Bell and Telus could redo their decision to go CDMA they'd choose GSM instead.
Note too that the CRTC requires the incumbents to lease towers to the new entrants for at least 5 years so as to give them the ability to compete without having to immediately build their entire network from scratch.