Things are about to get interesting in the mobile phone market in the next couple of months. Industry Minister Tony Clement disclosed today that he would be overruling the CRTCs decision to not allow Globalive to operate in Canada. The CRTC had ruled in September that the company did not meet the Canadian ownership requirements, a ruling that was heavily influenced by the incumbent mobile carriers Rogers, Bell and Telus.

This could viably be great news for Canadians as we finally have a new competitor to stir the pot in an otherwise stagnant market. The Canadian mobile phone market is what I would call “duopoly” in much of the country. Sure we have 3 big providers, but when you boil it down any choice to be made when picking a mobile provider, Rogers or Bell. Telus’ stronghold is in the West, so they don’t quite stack up to the top 2 companies. The problem with this duopoly is that there is little to no competing going on. Both of these companies are more then willing to pad their fat bottom lines instead of actually compete.

Just look at the recently launched iPhone on Bell and Telus. While it heralded a new day for choice of iPhone providers in Canada, it offered little to no incentive to consumers looking for a break on phone and data plan pricing. All 3 companies were more then content to just have the hottest handset on the market instead of actually competing for customers.

It is the hope that Globalive and their Wind Mobile brand will breathe some new life into a very stagnant market place. Canada is drastically lagging behind other countries when it comes to the cost of running a smartphone. With Vodaphone in the UK I can get a phone plan with 500megs of data for less then $35 CDN, taxes in. In Canada a plan like that is practically unfathomable. And

We can hope that Globalive is able to stir the pot a bit and actually able to bring competitive phone and data rates to Canada. Globalive is backed by telecom giant T-Mobile, so this isn’t a company that is coming into the market as nobodies. And if this leaked info from May is anywhere close to true, Canadians might finally have a true alternative to Bell and Rogers.