23 Facts About Wind Mobile

Freedom Wind Mobile Inc is a Canadian wireless telecommunications provider owned by Shaw Communications.

Wind Mobile was granted a 45-day stay of the decision to file arguments.

Wind Mobile went on to be CEO at a former Orascom property, Tunisiana, the leading operator in Tunisia, and co-found the Canadian cellphone repair chain Mobile Klinik.

Competitors Mobilicity and Public Wind Mobile withdrew from the CWTA, citing bias to its competitors Bell, Rogers, and Telus as justification.

In September 2014, VimpelCom's majority stake in Wind Mobile was sold to AAL Acquisitions Corporation for a fee of $135 million, with the consortium assuming $150 million of Wind's debt.

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Wind Mobile continued to license the Wind name and logo, which remained trademarks of Wind Telecom, until 2016.

New CEO Pietro Cordova announced in December 2014 that Wind Mobile was engaging in planning for further expansion and development of LTE services, including bidding in the Canadian government's 2015 spectrum auctions, which was not possible when the company was controlled by VimpelCom.

Cordova stated in an interview that Wind Mobile might be ready for an initial public offering in 2016 or 2017, if the Mid-Bowline Holdings investors agree.

In February 2015, the Financial Post had reported that Wind Mobile was in negotiations to take over Mobilicity in the weeks leading up to the AWS-3 spectrum auction registration deadline.

Mobilicity ultimately withdrew from the auction due to lack of funding, which allowed Wind Mobile to acquire the entire spectrum block set aside for new entrants in Alberta, British Columbia, and southern Ontario uncontested.

At the time, Wind Mobile's shareholders included the Toronto hedge fund West Face Capital, the California-based fund Tennenbaum Capital Partners, and Globalive Capital Voting Group, which included Tony Lacavera's investment fund together with investment vehicles owned by Alex Shnaider, Terrence Hui, and Michael Serruya, and an investment firm controlled by Lawrence Guffey .

The deal included Wind having exclusive rights to the underground mobile system for one year before BAI Canada would allow other providers to join the system.

Under the terms of Rogers Communications' acquisition of Mobilicity in June 2015, Wind Mobile purchased certain AWS spectrum licences formerly held by Shaw Communications and Mobilicity for the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northern and eastern regions of Ontario for a "peppercorn" payment of $1 per licence.

Wind Mobile negotiated an option to pay Rogers $25 million for half of Mobilicity's cell sites and other infrastructure at a later date.

Additionally, Wind Mobile agreed to swap spectrum licences with Rogers in southern Ontario so that both companies' AWS spectrum blocks were contiguous.

Brad Shaw, CEO of Shaw Communications, stated in an interview that the acquisition of Wind Mobile would allow Shaw to compete "at the same level" as an integrated telecommunications provider with rival Telus in western Canada and gain a foothold in the Ontario telecom market.

Wind Mobile completed the planned upgrades to its HSPA network in Vancouver in February 2016, announcing that the next coverage area to be upgraded would be Calgary.

Wind Mobile stated that it no longer wanted to license the Wind brand from VimpelCom due to increasing royalty fees, while CEO Alek Krstajic justified the move by stating that the company wanted to shed the "baggage" of the Wind name, and use the new ownership and developments as a means of re-launching the carrier.

Globalive Capital the founder of Freedom Wind Mobile's precursor made a bid by striking a network and spectrum sharing deal with telecom giant Telus.

Freedom Wind Mobile provides UMTS wireless services with High Speed Packet Access for data using its license for UMTS Band IV, known as the Advanced Wireless Services band.

Freedom Wind Mobile was the first Canadian wireless service provider to make use of Advanced Wireless Services bands for its primary network.

In 2009, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission complained that Wind Mobile received the majority of its startup funding from the foreign company Orascom Telecom Holding.

Public Wind Mobile itself received foreign funding of at least $350 million from the Export-Import Bank of China in 2010.