Canada’s low/no competition wireless market is poised to get another competitor next month…sorta. Amp’d Mobile will open its doors for business on March 14 with hopes of somehow luring young consumers with lots of disposable income away from Rogers, Bell, Telus and Virgin Canada. “We’re going to be the only people in the market with nothing to lose,” Chris Houston, president of Amp’d Mobile Canada, told the Globe & Mail, who might get an argument from Virgin’s Andrew Black.
Amp’d may have nothing to lose but how much will they gain in Canada? The company, which is trying to carve out a niche with super-cool, multi-media phones, only has 100,000 customers in the U.S., so you have to question how it will be received in Canada where consumers have quite parsimonious despite aggressive efforts by the carriers to boost ARPU.
Amp’d, which will use Telus’ network, is hoping the introduction of wireless local number portability next month will provide it with an opportunity to gain a foothold with consumers looking for a new wireless carrier but not willing to lose their telephone number. The funny thing about WLNP in Canada is there wasn’t much of a hue and cry from consumers for it. But the CRTC decided to institute WLNP as a way to encourage more competition in market where every carrier is committed to “disciplined pricing”, which translates into not using price as a competitive or marketing weapon. Of course, if the CRTC was really committed to encouraging wireless competition in Canada, it would have never approved Rogers’ acquisition of Microcell but that’s another story for another time.
Technorati Tags: Amp’d, Wireless
“The funny thing about WLNP in Canada is there wasn’t much of a hue and cry from consumers for it.”
Are you saying that customers didn’t want number portability? I respectfully disagree. From my unscientific polling of people I know they all really wanted it. Just because the CRTC doesn’t get a ton of applications doesn’t mean that customers don’t want to. Do you really think that people think the CRTC is going to solve their problems and that they should complain to them about getting it done? Do we really know how many people wrote to the CRTC to ask for it anyway?
It seems like the big carriers didn’t want it and as such discounted any consumer demand for it. I suspect customers will be happy when it arrives. I already know about 5-10 people who are going to make the change soon after.
I suspect many consumers wanted WLNP but it wasn’t like there was a loud outcry for it. It will be interesting to see how many consumers actually switch carriers given the numbers in the U.S. were less than expected. Don’t be too surprised for the carriers to institute some kind of WLNP “charge” for administrative expenses.
Did Canadian consumers even know that WLNP was a possibility and was even available in every other advanced mobile market? I don’t think so.
Even if the US has seen a much lower number of subscribers taking advantage of it, it did certainly account for increased competition, lowered prices, and more innovative content features, which are all things we don’t have in Canada. For example, Fido just *increased* the cost of GPRS. That’s right, increased not decreased, and GPRS, not UMTS. What’s wrong here?
I fully welcome all new MVNO entrants in the market, whether they only compete on price, or whether they also bring something different and unique to the table. Also good for Telus for opening up to them — if they didn’t, it would be Bell or Rogers benefiting from any success they have.
Yes I’m AMP’D! I’m sure we’ll even get them sponsoring much needed non-mainstream sports contests up here in Canada!
For the time being, higher prices are a fact of life within the wireless market. Here’s hoping competition brings lower prices and/or more interesting services.
It was my son and daughter who told me about WLNP as they want to make a switch to Blackberry Pearls. I think the younger generation who is very much aware of these issues; it just doesn’t get on the MSM radar. But then this is a generation that Bill Gates reported at CES as spending more time on the Internet than they do watching television.