Wind Mobile Said to Offer Half of Telus’s Rejected Offer for Mobilicity

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Wind Mobile has submitted a bid for Mobilicity that is worth about half of the $380 million offered by Telus, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

You may recall that Wind Mobile announced that it would participate in the auction process, but no specific amount was leaked. MobileSyrup’s sources whispered that Mobilicity was seeking to obtain roughly $350 million for its assets.

The final bidding deadline for Mobilicity ended on Monday, December 16. Wind Mobile submitted its bid a week before the deadline, the same person familiar with the matter said to Bloomberg.

Right before the auction’s first deadline, Wind Mobile’s Anthony Lacavera emphasized once again that Wind Mobile requires additional spectrum to grow its business for next-generation wireless services and has long-term plans to compete with the incumbents.

Both Mobilicity and Wind Mobile declined to comment:

Nick Anstett, a spokesman for Mobilicity, declined to comment on whether Wind Mobile had submitted a bid or say how many bids had been submitted. The bid-review process continues, and a decision could come any time in the next “several weeks,” Anstett said.

“Like any other organization, Wind is always considering the options and evaluating any opportunities available to us,” said Alexandra Maxwell, a spokeswoman for the company, a unit of Globalive Wireless Management Corp. Maxwell declined to comment specifically on a Mobilicity bid.

The year of 2013 has been decisive in the fate of the three wireless startups: Wind Mobile, Public Mobile and Mobilicity. The only one to move forward was Wind Mobile, and the acquisition of Mobilicity could mean another step forward to form a real competitor of the Big Three. And if we pepper that with the acquisition of a 700MHz block of spectrum and some help from the government in terms of regulation — see roaming rates — we may see some sort of competition in the Canadian wireless market.

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