Round two for big Telco mergers seems set to have fallen off the rails in Canada -- round one saw
Rogers Wireless merge with
Microcell Communications (Fido). While bigger can sometimes be better, in the wireless world lack of competition can hurt and Canadian users may have just ended up with bigger bills, the same service, and fewer choices. Of course, said merger would have involved both wireless and wireline services of the two giants, but the wireless parts alone would have seen a combined subscriber list 10.9 million names long. Apparently BCE Inc. was in such a hurry to get this done that the time pressures are what gave Telus cold feet. Of course, a group led by Cerberus Capital Management and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (BCE's biggest shareholder) are still in the running, so expect an update as soon as the dust settles.
Now that BCE's $51.7 billion buyout looks solid with the potential victory going to the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, we can finally issue a collective sigh or relief. Bell is likely going to stay Bell, no merger with Telus looms on the Horizon, and all is well and good in Canadian CDMA-land. Or is it? The Financial Post is reporting on some Analyst's predictions that will see Bell shift from CDMA to GSM. We see these types of rumors surface now and again, and while Bell likely salivates at Rogers Wireless' annual $450 million GSM roaming revenue, the cost of said conversion would be out of the park. Of course, this is all fantasy 'til we here something official but we definitely aren't counting chickens around here. 
