TORONTO – As the Canadian wireless landscape continues to feel competitive heat from the likes of Shaw’s Freedom Mobile, Rogers CFO Tony Staffieri remains confident any impact is manageable.
“We’ve competed with Freedom, and the prior names of Freedom for upwards of 10 years now,” Staffieri said, speaking Wednesday at Scotiabank’s Telecom, Media and Technology Conference. “We compete not only on price, but also on network quality and points of distribution, among other factors. Getting the customer is one thing, but keep the customer is something else.”
Despite the Q4 2017 price war which saw Freedom disrupt the holiday run-up with a 10GB-$50 package that forced the Big Three telcos to follow suit, Staffieri believes such competition is ultimately healthy for both business and consumers.
“Are we seeing signs of disruption in the market that will ruin the economic dynamics of the market? Not really,” he says. “We’ve seen it play out in terms of competitive intensity in Q4, but it isn’t something that carried into Q1 or Q2. It continues to be a fairly rational, yet competitive market. The market is growing at a very healthy clip, and I think that gives a player like Freedom the ability to absorb their aspirations within that growth without having much of a market impact.”
Staffieri added that as Rogers evolves into 5G technology, the more it sees the upside to having its own national network as a competitive advantage (Bell and Telus famously share their wireless network).
As the arrival of 5G technology draws ever closer, he says Rogers does not see the economics of network-sharing as working out in the company’s favour. Asked about the company’s network sharing arrangement with Vidéotron in Quebec, Staffieri expects both companies to evaluate the agreement to ensure it continues to work for them.
“That [Vidéotron] agreement was struck seven or eight years ago, in the world of 3 and 3G service that evolved to 4G. As our arrangement evolves to 5G, I believe both of us will look to what’s going to work for us economically on both sides of the partnership. We’ll continue to evaluate it and make sure it makes sense going forward.”
