This is a really interesting viewpoint. You don't get real competition from network providers until you have multiple networks. The creation of a "flanking company" is disingenuous unless the flanking company is actually deploying a disruptive technology. For example, IBM created a separate and loosely tied business to develop the personal computer, even though it disrupted it's mainframe business. What Rogers is doing is really disrupting new network facility-based entrants (i.e. Wind).

Some other examples of the flanking maneuver:
- Bell offered a $5 flat rate LD plan to disrupt (let's say kill) Vonage in Canada
- Rogers bought Fido (and its network) because Fido started offering free local calls (it could have nearly eliminated the distinction between wireline and wireless local services). That was after Fido successfully lobbied for local number portability. The Competition Bureau and the CRTC should have never let that happen.
- Bell bought Virgin (which offers a disruptive customer experience). It's too bad Virgin didn't decide to build it's own network.
- Rogers is now playing with tiered pricing on it's high-speed Internet service to prepare for the entry of Netflix into Canada.

It's probably good to get some innovation coming from flanking companies. But don't ever confuse it for real competition.

new low cost division, lets call it that way, but is still expensive, I can imagine how expensive is it to run a cellular network , once everything is paid off and technology is running flawlessly. Like the price for the voice mail or caller ID needs to be 7$ each :D i think once I add a caller ID to my phone it will consume another power plant just to show me who is calling, why nobody is asking about thouse nonsense prices for nothing ? nothing that comes already with the transmition technology ? its all just lies, no wonder rogers bell and telus is so hardly fighting aganst any competition, its heaven for them here. trimonopololy, they are all agreed on the same, but this we all know already, but why nobody is taking any action against that ?

Isn't this a bit reminiscent of the brand confusion we had in the North American auto industry - and still have, to some extent? GM had Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Buick, Oldsmobile, Hummer, Cadillac and Corvette; Chrysler had Chrysler, Plymouth, Dodge, plus all the old AMC and Jeep brands; Ford had Mercury, Ford, Lincoln, and maybe some others.

Each of those companies had brands that seemed to deliberately blur the landscape of their competitors, and even cannibalize their own. The only difference was that, most of the time, you could get more than one of them at any given dealer, and they didn't really try to hide the parent company's brand.

After the auto-crash, I think it forced some to scale back. But how did it hurt consumers? GM says they've paid back the money they had to borrow from the government. Ford says they didn't have to borrow any.

Presumably, as car buyers (who chose to stay with domestic brands), we probably had to pay for all their extra marketing budgets in the purchase price. This opened the door to more focused foreign brands.

But aside from some confusion, angst/cognitive dissonance during the purchase process, and occasionally some buyer's remorse, what did it cost the public? If it was a comparable situation to the current cell phone market, why didn't the car companies get nailed for this under the law?

I'm not disagreeing entirely with the Differ, but just trying to see how these examples of issues with comparable brand situations fit your model, and why they've played out rather quietly after the auto-crash.

Thanks for the thought-provocation.

- Scott

Yes.

Did you know that the Chatr coverage map for the East end of Ottawa is pretty much identical to the Wind coverage map?

Really, Rogers? Really? Somehow your network of well established towers doesn't work for Chatr coverage in Rockland? Nice use of subtlety.

I can't summon the energy to check, but imagine this is pretty well the case everywhere.

Yes.