Telus responds to Geist blog
p2pnet.net news view:- Telus responds to my column this week on the forthcoming wireless spectrum auction with a letter to the editor in today’s Ottawa Citizen.
The company says that it takes exception to my advocacy for a set-aside for new entrants, stating that “we strongly believe that the competitive playing field should be free from government intervention so that companies can compete fairly for customers.” The letter adds that the spectrum auction “is not about traditional wireless phone service.”
Flip over the business page, however, and you get a different message from Telus CEO Darren Entwistle. Seeking to sell a Telus – Bell merger, he now says that “we believe that there are clear remedies to ensure vibrant and sustainable competition without divesting the mobile networks of either company.”
Those remedies including “setting aside spectrum space in an upcoming auction to be held by the government that could be awarded to a new entrant into the wireless market.”
In the same paper on the same day, Telus argues that the spectrum auction is not about traditional wireless phone service but can remedy competition concerns for traditional wireless phone service and it also argues that the government should not intervene in the market. Except when it should.
Michael Geist
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist[at]uottawa.ca and is on-line at www.michaelgeist.ca.]
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