RE:RE:Shaw acquires Wind Mobile for 1.6 billionstockstarker wrote:
I would not worry about Shaw for awhile, first the deal will not take place until the 3rd quarter of 2016 and Shaw will have to spend billions of dollars to upgrade Winds wireless infrastructure.
Just to add to your thoughts...
This is obviously a negative for T but I don't think it's as bad as the market is reacting.
The deal is obviously a good match for Wind and Shaw. Wind finally gets the support it needs to build out and upgrade ther network. Mobility gives Shaw the quadruple play it needs and it's a product that will help feed its revenue and dividend.
However, it's going to take some time to integrate the companies, let alone their billing systems to allow integrated bundling. And you're likely not going to see aggressive pricing. After Alek Krstajic became CEO, he talked about offerring value instead of cut-throat pricing because of the need to get a return on their network build. Even today on BNN, he talked about how Wind will likely have premium pricing plans when they roll out LTE.
If you look at the competition between SJR and T in the home market, heavy discounting is rare. Instead, pricing has stabilized and they're both happy to slowly increase pricing and feed their revenue and dividend growth. I suspect it will go the same way in wireless.
An interesting challeng for Wind is the iPhone. Even though it's all about BYOD nowadays, if they can't offer a subsidized version of the latest iPhone, they'll continue to lose out on a key segment on the market, just like BCE and T did against RCI in the early days of the iPhone.
Lastly, while wireless will continue to be a cash cow, the days significant growth is starting to trend down, regardless of additional competition. T has to look for the next growth driver within the next few years be it FTTH, health, or the IoT's. T's numbers should still be solid the next few quarters but it's also about looking for clues how well these new growth drivers are transitioning into real revenue.