Saturday, September 07, 2013

Verizon says no to Canada. For now.

Big news in telecom last week, as Verizon confirmed what we'd long suspected: that despite months of speculation that they were about to cross into Canada and take on the big 3 wireless carriers, Rogers, Bell and Telus, they had no intention of coming here. Not yet, anyway. Instead, they were buying the 45% of the Verizon Wireless partnership they didn't already own, and paying soon-to-be-former partner Vodafone a staggering $130 billion U.S. in the second-largest deal in corporate history.

Then, because long weekends should always end with a bang, Microsoft announced its $7.2 billion U.S. buyout of Nokia's mobile division at 11 p.m. Monday, just as I was tucking in for the night. I learned about it via am email from a producer on my BlackBerry and immediately knew Tuesday was going to be fun.

And it was. I wrote the following articles for Yahoo! Canada Finance as I juggled deadlines, phone interviews and quick trips to and between television studios:
Verizon megadeal challenges Ottawa’s quest for wireless competitionMicrosoft’s Nokia deal crucial for Ballmer’s legacy
As a tech journalist and analyst, this is what I do. I make sense of stuff like this and turn it into content that, hopefully, folks understand. I had ample opportunity to do just that on Tuesday. Here's the rundown:

TV:

CTV Canada AM. Spoke with Beverly Thomson via FaceTime from home about the both stories. That's our rogue's gallery of pics and artwork behind me on the mantel. I think we need to get serious about framing and hanging our stuff. Oops, I rambled. Story video is here, interview video is here.
CBC The National. Spoke with Havard Gould for his report on the newscast. Report video here.
Global National. Chatted with Kieron O'Dea for his report. Newscast video here.

Print/Online:

Toronto Star. Verizon not interested in Canada after all. Byline: Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew
Canoe.ca/QMI/Journal de Montreal. Verizon: l'industrie soulagĂ©e, le client en attenteByline: Michel Munger. Alternate link here.

Radio:

NewsTalk1010 Toronto. Spoke to John Moore, host of Moore in the Morning. I'm still hunting down the audio from this hit, but here's audio from a June interview with John when Verizon first began kicking the tires.
570News Kitchener-Waterloo. Spoke with Gary Doyle.
CJOB 680 Winnipeg. Spoke with Charles Adler.
CBC Ontario Morning. Spoke with Wei Chen.
CBC Radio. As part of my work with our national public broadcaster's Syndication unit, I spoke with radio stations in sequence across the country, including interviews with the following:


Newstalk 770 CHQR Calgary. Discussed Verizon with Angela Kokott as part of our weekly Tech Tuesday segment.
AM640 Toronto. Spoke with Bill Carroll
News 889 Saint John and News 919 Moncton. Guest of McLean In The Morning with Tyler McLean

I'll add more links as I find them online. Happy viewing/reading! More to come...

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