Industry Canada Opens bidding for mobile wireless spectrum

date: 21st January 2001, source: strategis.ic.gc.ca

Brian Tobin, Minister of Industry, announced the start of the bidding for mobile wireless spectrum last Wednesday with first round completed on Friday.

"Providing additional spectrum offers the mobile wireless industry an opportunity to meet the demands of Canada's rapidly expanding wireless market," said Minister Tobin. "These new ways of delivering communications services will encourage the evolution of third-generation PCS services, unleashing the power of the Internet and making it accessible to Canadians wherever and whenever they choose."

Seven companies qualified to participate in the auction of additional Personal Communications Services (PCS) spectrum in the two gigahertz (GHz) frequency range. One of the highest bidders by total amount is W2N Inc http://www.wireless2net.com/ ($ 117,970,000) owned by Itemus and Wispra. GoldmanSach entered as a partner with W2N Inc last week.

Top Bidders by Total Amount of Standing High Bids:
W2N Inc. $ 117,970,000
Bell Mobility Inc.$ 59,900,000
Rogers Wireless Inc.$ 55,620,000
Nova Scotia Limited $ 14,660,000
Telus Communications Inc.$ 14,200,000
Thunder Bay Telephone $ 600,000

The bids will be conducted securely over the Internet using Canadian public key infrastructure (PKI) encryption and digital signature technologies to ensure their confidentiality and authenticity.

This initiative demonstrates the Government of Canada's goal of improving the Canadian information infrastructure and encourages growth in the range of wireless telecommunications services available to Canadians. It will also enable more Canadians to connect to the information highway from anywhere, at anytime.

Additional details on the auction, the bidders and the round results can be found on Industry Canada's web site at: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/spectrum.

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