O Canada! > Canadian > Canadian Broadband > Wind Mobile wants CRTC hearing over Telus ownership

If Verizon & ATT were permitted to buy Rogers and Bell, I'd agree with you.

My point is not that there is no such thing as true Canadian culture -- there is. My point is that the justification is often a pretextual and used to protect incumbent interests at the expense of the consumer.

If I thought I could get German style privacy protection, I'd switch to TMobile in a New York minute. I absolutely presumed that the US players had to play by Canadian rules.

Assuming they set up a Canadian operation, I'd assume they would, but I don't know how that would interact with their own obligations to the Patriot Act and with our cross border cooperation arrangements.

I'd want to investigate that's for sure.

There would be nothing to investigate. US law applies to us companies, *even* if they are only partially owned by Americans. Patriot Act applies, regardless of anything else.

You can check priv coms site for this and more info.

I have to wonder the merit of this whole situation, though. If the investment is held the same way as it was for Globalive, the courts ruled it was perfectly legal, which means that Telus and Bell would have just as much right to operate under this kind of ownership model as Globalive does.

It'll be interesting to see how the recent ownership rules come into play, because as I understand it Globalive could have significant foreign ownership up to and including 100% as they are a new entrant, but Telus and Bell are still limited to the old rules.

But you're right, if Telus was found to be in the exact same position as Globalive was when they launched an objection it will be a lawyer feeding frenzy.

.... but consider some of these Canadian produced programs that don't quality:

*House (supposedly set in New Jersey);

Answer: Patriot Act.

Where it may get hairy for these companies, is if all the gear is located in Canada, then which law takes precedence. Obviously we're talking theoreticals here.

Civil suits cost money and they are up with the heavy team from Telus with the "Loser pays" system here.

Let the government agencies doing the dirty work for them and after Telus had been declared guilty, then come in for the damage in civil court. Telus would still drag it out for a few long years.

WIND's pockets are pretty deep, I would assume that's why they brought this up in the first place.

With 700MHz bids coming in next year (and the less useful 2500 MHz auction to be held in 2014), should WIND actually spend that money on a court battle that can drag on for a few years with no guaranteed positive outcome or use it wisely to have a large coverage?