U.S. wireless giant Verizon said Thursday it isn’t prepared to make any announcement regarding a possible entry into the Canadian wireless market.
So we’ll speculate. On a conference call, the chief financial officer of the second-largest carrier in the United States listed a handful of pros and cons currently being weighed by the company, which has reportedly expressed an interest in buying struggling Canadian wireless providers Mobilicity and Wind Mobile.
A pro is the heavily populated Ontario-Quebec corridor which sits directly adjacent to U.S. states Verizon operates in. “If you look at the population of Canada, about 70 per cent of that population is between Toronto and Quebec,” CFO Francis Shammo said on the call Thursday.
On the con side, Shammo cited Canada’s uncertain regulatory environment as well as restrictions on foreign ownership of telecom networks as a potential deterrent.
He called the firm’s discussions about entering Canada an “exploratory exercise.”
“We continue to just look at the market,” Shammo said.
The U.S. giant signaled interest in entering Canada last month after the federal government blocked the purchase of Mobilicity by Telus and reaffirmed its intent to establish four carriers in every market across the country.
Experts suggest Verizon could handily step into that role. “But at this point it’s really just an exploratory exercise,” Shammo said.
“Verizon may still be waiting for board approval before it can be more definitive about its plans for Canada,” telecom and wireless analyst Dvai Ghose said following the call.
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