Moore says incumbent campaigns ‘dishonest’

Canada’s wireless providers are trying to “skew” the debate over Industry Canada’s wireless policy through “misleading campaigns,” Industry Minister James Moore said. In a statement posted on his website Tuesday, Moore said he understands why incumbent carriers BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp. are pressuring the government “to design policies that serve the interests of their firms,” and suggested their efforts to gain public support would prove fruitless. “I think Canadians know very well what is at stake and they know dishonest attempts to skew debates via misleading campaigns when they see them,” Moore said in response to a letter from BCE director Anthony Fell to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, published in the National Post earlier Tuesday. The incumbents have launched public campaigns to change rules limiting them to a single block of “prime” spectrum in the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction while allowing other players, including U.S. telecom giant Verizon Communications Inc., to acquire two out of four prime blocks in each region of the country. The Globe and Mail reported Wednesday that Verizon representatives met with Industry Canada officials on May 21 to discuss a possible Canadian market entry. In his letter, Fell said he was “dismayed” at Industry Canada’s handling of the file, and that it was “disrespectful” for Moore not to give the carriers’ CEOs more time to explain their positions when he met with them last month. “The biased spectrum auction and other major subsidies being proposed for Verizon have all the hallmarks of a political populist initiative to capitalize on a mis-informed public view that the Canadian cellular market is uncompetitive and Canadian cellphone charges are much higher in Canada than in the U.S,” Fell said. Moore said the auction policies “were quite deliberate,” adding: “I do not believe the public is misinformed.”

Moore says incumbent campaigns ‘dishonest’

Brief | August 14, 2013

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