Mobilicity agrees with CRTC’s ownership directives

Start-up cellco Mobilicity (formerly known as DAVE Wireless) has agreed with directives from Canadian regulator CRTC ordering it to alter shareholder veto rights and board of directors’ structure to comply fully with foreign ownership rules before it can launch commercial services. The changes, which must be made by 7 June 2010, involve increasing the number of Canadian shareholder nominees to four, making a total of ten directors, whilst to avoid deadlocked votes the regulator ruled that a deciding vote must rest with the chairperson, who must be Canadian and cannot be nominated by a non-Canadian shareholder. The CRTC also ordered the raising of the threshold for a minority (non-Canadian) shareholder veto: shareholders may only veto a board decision with a value of 5% of the enterprise value of the company, a level the CRTC recently also set for two other wireless start-ups, Public Mobile (BMV Holdings) and Globalive Wireless (Wind Mobile). Wind launched commercial mobile services in December 2009, whilst Public Mobile is set to launch this month; in a decision in April 2010 the CRTC said that Public will meet requirements of the ownership and control regime and will therefore be eligible to operate as a Canadian operator.