He’s been trading punches with the three big telecom companies for years. He’s just won a huge battle. Here’s what’s in it for you
Interview by Malcolm Johnston | Photography by Mark Peckmezian
(Image: Mark Peckmezian)
When you launched Wind Mobile in 2009, you were a folk hero to disgruntled cellphone customers. Today, Canadians still pay some of the highest rates in the world, and customer service in the industry is as miserable as ever. What went wrong? Did you sell out?
Nothing went wrong. But when you’re competing against a 30-year entrenched oligopoly in Bell, Rogers and Telus, you encounter some obstacles.
Like what?
Where do I start? All three have failed to fully cooperate with the government’s requirement that they allow us to put our equipment on their towers, so we had to build our own. But the worst roadblock was the big three lobbying the CRTC to block our launch in 2009. They claimed that Wind was foreign controlled because my main investor was Egyptian. The CRTC shut us down for two months. I had 700 employees and zero revenue. We burned through tens of millions of dollars. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which dismissed it in April.
How did you celebrate the ruling?
I took my girlfriend, Kimberly, to Paris. She’s a shoe freak, so we went to a Christian Louboutin show.
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Despite the recent 
