Wireless cableco Look Communications seeks buyer or partners

The current owners of Look Communications Inc. are preparing to throw in the towel on the struggling wireless cable company as the Milton ON-based firm recently announced that it is seeking a "strategic repositioning" with the help of investment banking firm Greenhill & Company. Look’s vice-chair and CEO Gerry McGoey says the company is exploring all possibilities, including a sale or a partnership. "We’ve had a number of people talking to us and they’ve gone the full range of conversations," he tells Report on Wireless. "Some aren’t in the business and want to get into it, some are in the business and want to expand, some want to get into the TV business because they’re only in the voice business." The company’s fate was sealed when satellite TV came to Canada in the late 1990s. "When the satellites went up in the air, the business model was done," McGoey says. Since 2001, Look has steadily lost TV subscribers, decreasing from a high of approximately 90,000 customers to slightly more than 21,000 at the end of May 2006. A number of key elements came together recently that made this an opportune time to explore alternatives, McGoey explains. The most important change: the technology is starting to prove itself viable. In the United States, companies such as Qualcomm and Crown Castle are using technology similar to that used by Look, building parallel networks capable of delivering true mobile broadcasting services, and the US carriers are moving to offer the service, he adds. While nothing of the sort is taking place here in Canada, it stands to reason that it is only a matter of time before it does. Rogers Communications Inc. acknowledged this could happen in Canada. Upinder Saini, VP of new products and content development, noted at a Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association conference in February 2006 that perhaps mobile TV services from the cellular providers would move to a different network in the future. Partnering with a cellular operator, according to McGoey, is logical. "We think the next wave of communications, entertainment and information in Canada is going to be broadband broadcast. The people with the brands and the customers are the telcos and the people with the unique asset and the technology is . And so we think there is a natural relationship of sorts." The Look mobile TV service also has an advantage over offerings from wireless operators: Look’s service doesn’t rely on the consumer device. Its service could be transmitted to any kind of network end point. "It could be a cell phone, it could be a PDA, it could be your laptop, it could be a special TV set," McGoey explains. Look has two key assets: its spectrum licence and its broadcasting licence. The CRTC has renewed the company’s broadcasting licence until 2011. The spectrum licence covers the Windsor ON to Quebec City corridor.

Wireless cableco Look Communications seeks buyer or partners

News | November 3, 2006

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