Canada’s effort to expand mobile competition has likely failed with news that three of the most significant new independent entrants have put themselves up for sale, with one likely to be acquired by Telus, western Canada’s largest phone company.

With Bell Canada, Rogers Communications, and Telus dominating at least 90 percent of Canada’s wireless marketplace, breaking up the triopoly was unlikely to be easy, but three of Canada’s newest players that acquired spectrum just five years ago are already looking for exit strategies.

Bloomberg News reported Friday that Mobilicity is in talks to be imminently acquired by Telus for between $350-400 million. Public Mobile has hired investment bankers to find a buyer. Vimpelcom, Ltd., which owns Wind Mobile, announced it was “exploring its options, including divestment.”

The three companies have competed with the dominant players for about three years with little success. Combined, the three have not managed to achieve even a combined 10 percent market share. Most sell unlimited talk and text plans to customers that would normally buy prepaid service.

Potentially slowing any sale is a requirement that none of the independent companies can transfer their spectrum licenses until 2014, a condition of the 2008 special spectrum auction that reserved prime frequencies for new competitors and put them off-limits to larger mobile companies.

Telus remains the most likely suitor of independent providers because the company lacks the spectrum assets of its larger competitors Bell and Rogers.

Mobilicity operates its HSPA+ “4G” network on Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) frequencies in the 1,700MHz range. Although Telus has considerable spectrum in British Columbia and Alberta — its home territory — the provider has considerably less in eastern Canada, particularly in large metropolitan cities. Mobilicity has a tiny market share in the Greater Toronto Area, yet its AWS spectrum equals that of Telus in the city. Telus could find an acquisition of Mobilicity the easiest way to bolster its available spectrum for future 4G deployment and expansion.

Three small independent wireless providers hold almost as much combined spectrum as Telus holds today.

Any exit of a combination of Canada’s newest wireless players will likely be seen as a failure of the government’s efforts to bolster competition. The dominance among the three largest providers has left Canadians with high-cost plans and a wireless service contract that lasts one year longer than America’s standard two-year service agreement.

Industry Canada, the economic regulator fostering a growing, competitive and knowledge-based Canadian economy, had little to say about the news.

“Any transaction that requires regulatory approval will be considered accordingly,” said Alexandra Fortier, a spokeswoman for Industry Minister Christian Paradis. “We cannot comment on speculation.”

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BNN reports industry consolidation is likely forthcoming in Canada’s wireless marketplace as Telus seeks to acquire independent provider Mobilicity. A financial analyst says the move is designed to curb budget-priced wireless service in Canada. Mobilicity would likely eventually be merged into Telus-owned Koodo Mobile, the company’s prepaid mobile division.  (5 minutes)

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Too little, too late? Industry Minister Christian Paradis says the Harper government wants to open up the wireless market to more players with another wireless spectrum auction. But now several of Canada’s newest independent providers are all up for sale, and the country’s dominant three may end up owning one or more of them.  (2 minutes)

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The Toronto Globe & Mail explores why Canadians hate their cell phone and mobile broadband providers so much.  (2 minutes)

What is the best way to win a big promotion at Cablevision? Be related to the Dolan family that founded the cable system.

Cablevision Systems CEO James Dolan suddenly announced a shuffling of executives at the helm of the cable operation that serves suburban New York, Connecticut, and parts of New Jersey.

Dolan’s wife got the biggest promotion: president of Optimum Services. That represents a big jump for Kristin Dolan, who was last seen helping revive the long dead career of Michael Bolton in a marketing and rebranding exercise that turned the faded pop musician into a de facto Cablevision mascot. Under her leadership, Cablevision managed to put its most important product — broadband, dead last in its triple play marketing campaigns.

Brian Sweeney, Dolan’s brother-in-law, also scored a new title – senior executive vice president of strategy.

Dolan called the management shifts a pro-customer effort that would refocus and streamline the company’s decision-making processes. Since both executives will report directly to Dolan, some industry insiders believe James Dolan intends to tightly consolidate his control over management decisions at the company.

Kristin will keep her role as chief of brand positioning and expand her oversight into the company’s sales and promotional activities. Sweeney will serve as the “long-term strategy” guy, overseeing planning, customer retention, and winning customers away from Cablevision’s biggest competitor — Verizon FiOS.

A large number of former Cablevision executives defected from the cable company in 2011, most heading with former chief operating officer Tom Rutledge to Charter Communications.

Compare Optimum/Cablevision’s Marketing Campaigns: Before <- Kristin Dolan -> With

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Cablevision’s ‘Before Kristin’ Advertising (1 minute)

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Cablevision’s ‘With Kristin’ Advertising (1 minute)

AT&T suddenly announced it was ready to build its own gigabit fiber network in Austin.

AT&T and Time Warner Cable report they are ready to make more investments in their operations in Austin, Tex. to compete with Google Fiber when it arrives in the middle of next year.

Time Warner Cable says it already operates a multi-gigabit fiber optic network — one residential customers cannot easily access or afford. Residential broadband speeds at the cable operator top out at 50/5Mbps in Austin, at a cost higher than what Google plans to charge for 1,000/1,000Mbps service. AT&T’s U-verse network maxes out at 24/3Mbps, assuming customers have good copper wiring between AT&T’s fiber in the neighborhood and their home.

“The cable and phone company providers have purposely confused their networks’ maximum speed capacity with real end-user speeds for years, and when that fails to convince they simply claim customers don’t need or want those speeds anyway,” says Stop the Cap! reader and Austin resident Sam Knoll.

Knoll is enthusiastic about giving Time Warner Cable the boot, partly to pay them back for their aborted consumption billing trial attempted in Austin in 2009.

“I am not completely convinced Time Warner Cable understands just how much damage they did to their reputation when they pulled that stunt, and I’m certain they will attempt it again if they have a chance,” Knoll said. “The best thing customers can do is switch to a provider that believes usage caps and consumption billing are the fraudulent ripoff we know them to be. Google already knows this.”

Some Time Warner Cable customers in Austin never forgot the company tried to meter Internet usage in a failed experiment back in 2009. (Image: The Austinst)

Competition from deep-pocketed Google could eventually transform the broadband business model for American providers, assuming Google builds its fiber network in enough cities to challenge the conventional wisdom that prices have plenty of room to grow with faster Internet access. The more customers that sign up for Google’s already-super-fast broadband, the more providers will have to compete with better and faster service.

But AT&T is not convinced. The company announced yesterday it was prepared to build a gigabit fiber network not just in Austin, but also in surrounding Williamson County, with plenty of caveats.

“[We will only build the network if] the demand is there and if we get the same terms and conditions as Google received,” said AT&T spokeswoman Tracy King.

AT&T told the Austin American-Statesman the company wanted a faster regulatory approval process and permission to only build its faster fiber network in neighborhoods where there is proven demand for the service. Current franchise agreements often compel providers to offer service throughout the community and prohibits “cherry-picking” customers in high-income or low construction cost areas.

An AT&T official told KEYE-TV he had no idea how much AT&T would charge for gigabit broadband. Google charges $70 a month in Kansas City.

Austin has promised cooperation with Google, although it is not extending tax breaks or grants to the search engine giant. Google will get easy access to Austin Energy’s municipally owned infrastructure including utility poles and rights-of-way.

Google is speculated to be building showcase fiber networks to embarrass incumbent cable and phone providers who typically sell standard broadband service with speeds of 6-15Mbps in most larger communities. Rural areas are lucky to have 3Mbps service, and often much less.

But if Google intended to force major upgrades by cable and phone companies across the country, it might be disappointed with the response so far from AT&T and Time Warner Cable. Both companies indicate they will invest in and upgrade their networks to compete, but only in the service areas where Google-style competition exists. For the rest of the country, phone and cable companies are prepared to continue with the current “broadband scarcity” business model that delivers upgrades only occasionally, often accompanied by usage limits, consumption billing, and/or higher prices.

“Google has proved that there is a business model for selling abundant bandwidth as opposed to a business model for allocating scarce bandwidth,” said Blair Levin, a former chief of staff of the Federal Communications Commission.

“They are saying this is not an experiment. It is a business,” Levin told the newspaper. “In Kansas City, Google did the country an enormous favor. They said, give us regulatory flexibility to design the business and give us access to city property so we can build a network to lower the cost.”

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KEYE in Austin talks with AT&T about their plans for a gigabit broadband network to compete with Google Fiber. The AT&T spokesman seemed more interested in pitching the company’s deregulation agenda and was short on specifics.  (3 minutes)

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KXAN in Austin talked with Google competitors Time Warner Cable and AT&T about how they will respond to the Google Fiber challenge.   (3 minutes)

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KVUE in Austin called Google’s entry into the city the opening salvo of ‘Fiber Wars,’ as AT&T promises its own gigabit network. Austin residents intend to take advantage of the competition to force providers to give them better deals to keep their business.  (3 minutes)

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KXAN explains the possibilities of gigabit fiber, but also asks a former Google insider why the search engine is getting into the broadband business.  (5 minutes)

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KTBC was skeptical of AT&T’s sudden interest in gigabit broadband. “Gee, what a coincidence,” commented the anchor of Austin’s Fox affiliate.  (2 minutes)

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Some Austin area residents already have access to a gigabit network — the one at the University of Texas at Austin. The Texas Advanced Computing Center uses gigabit speeds to generate computer modeling and process enormous amounts of data. The need for speed and capacity grows at the university by about 40 percent a year, but that does not present much trouble to the institution. Despite the growth, Brad Englert, chief information officer at UT says they can handle it.

“We’re able to keep up with that because the cost of bandwidth keeps going down as we buy more,” Englert told KEYE-TV Austin.  (1 minute)

Austin’s television news has gone all out for Google Fiber, which is being unveiled today at a press event. Stop the Cap! will have coverage of the announcement, but in the meantime, here is a roundup of local coverage about Google Fiber in Austin:

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Austin’s local Fox affiliate KTBC reports city officials stayed tight-lipped about Google Fiber, but Google may have previewed its intentions by adding The Longhorn Network to its television lineup several months ago. Local technology experts say the upgrade is worth the wait and will be a boon to Austin’s economy. (2 minutes)

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Now that Austin will get Google Fiber, how long will residents have to wait to sign up? Mid-2014 is the estimate. KXAN explored how Google was unveiled in Kansas City. The station also took a look at other cities with gigabit fiber networks, many of them publicly owned alternatives to big phone and cable companies. KXAN compares the cost for 1,000Mbps service in different cities around the country. (3 minutes)

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KEYE notes Gov. Rick Perry is showing up for this morning’s unveiling of Google Fiber. In between some minor technical glitches in the report, some viewers say they are ready to sign up for $70 gigabit Internet now, just to stick it to Clearwire ($50 a month) and Time Warner Cable.  (2 minutes)

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KVUE says Google Fiber could boost Austin’s economy by luring even more high-tech companies. It could also stop Time Warner Cable and AT&T from trying more Internet Overcharging schemes on area customers.  (2 minutes)