Skip to main content

The Wind Mobile store located at 499 Bloor St. West is photographed Feb. 12, 2014.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

The results of the first of this year's spectrum auctions will be revealed Friday morning, with Wind Mobile expected to win new airwaves in most of the areas its network covers.

The federal government structured the auction for spectrum in the AWS-3 (advanced wireless services) frequency band to benefit small players, such as Toronto-based Wind, setting aside 60 per cent of the 50 megahertz available in total for operating new entrants.

In late January, fellow startup carrier Mobilicity – which, like Wind, offers service in parts of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta – made a last-ditch effort to take part in the auction. A court granted Mobilicity, which is under creditor protection, approval to enter into a new financing agreement for $65-million, allowing it to place a refundable deposit on Jan. 30.

However, a source close to Mobilicity who did not want to be named because the matter is confidential, said the company was ultimately unable to secure the necessary funding to bid beyond that amount on Tuesday, the deadline for sealed bids in the auction. A spokesman for Mobilicity declined to comment Thursday.

This makes it likely that Wind will win the licences in three out of the four licence areas where it operates for the low reserve price set by the government (the auction rules say the winner pays whatever the second-highest bid is or, if there is no other bidder, the opening bid amount).

The company is likely to have bid on licences in Alberta, British Columbia and Southern Ontario, for which the reserve prices total $56.4-million. Wind could also have bid on the licence for the Eastern Ontario and Outaouais region, however Quebecor Inc.'s Videotron Ltd. operates in that area as well and would provide some competition for that licence.

Videotron is likely to win the set-aside licences covering Quebec while Bragg Communications Inc.-owned Eastlink Wireless is expected to win set-aside spectrum in the parts of Atlantic Canada where it operates.

Canada's incumbent wireless carriers, Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp. and BCE Inc., are eligible to bid only on the remaining 20 megahertz of spectrum in each of the 16 licence areas up for grabs in the auction. Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. and Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. do not qualify as new entrants in their provinces and so must bid against the national carriers for that non-set-aside spectrum.

Federal Industry Minister James Moore will announce the results of the auction at 8:30 a.m. E.T. at a press conference in Toronto.

AWS-3 spectrum is situated nearby the AWS airwaves that were licensed in Canada's 2008 auction. Both share similar features: They are considered "mid-band" spectrum with more limited propagation characteristics than the low-band 700 MHz spectrum auctioned in 2014, but the ability to carry large amounts of data.

There is not yet an ecosystem of handsets compatible with the AWS-3 frequency. However, the United States just concluded its own auction of airwaves in that band, raising a record $44.9-billion (U.S.) in committed bids, and the ecosystem is expected to develop within the next two to three years.

Canada is also conducting a second spectrum auction of airwaves in the 2,500 MHz frequency band, which will begin on April 14. A handful of rural Internet providers, who use such high-band spectrum to provide home Internet service in areas where wired service is unavailable, have registered to participate. Mobilicity did not register and neither did SaskTel, which already holds the maximum amount of that type of spectrum the government permits.

Report an editorial error

Report a technical issue

Editorial code of conduct

Tickers mentioned in this story

Study and track financial data on any traded entity: click to open the full quote page. Data updated as of 28/03/24 4:15pm EDT.

SymbolName% changeLast
BCE-N
BCE Inc
-0.82%33.98
BCE-T
BCE Inc
-1.01%46.03
RCI-N
Rogers Communication
-0.49%41

Interact with The Globe