Wind Mobile, the Canadian fourth carrier, was crushed by the Big Three and sold at a loss

Wind Mobile was launched in 2009 as one of the Canadian government's experiments to break the oligopoly of the Big Three carriers (Rogers, Bell, Telus). Founded by Anthony Lacavera through Globalive, Wind spent $442 million on AWS spectrum in 2008 and secured $508 million in debt financing from Egypt's Orascom Telecom. It launched aggressively with cheap unlimited plans, hoping to capture price-sensitive customers in Canada's expensive wireless market.

From the start, Wind struggled. Its network was 3G-only in an era when the Big Three were rolling out LTE. Wind could not afford to participate in the 700 MHz spectrum auction in 2014 after majority owner VimpelCom withdrew financial support, leaving it with thin urban coverage in only five cities. The company never achieved more than 5% market share and burned through cash trying to expand.

In 2014, VimpelCom sold its majority stake for just $135 million while assuming $150 million of Wind's debt — a fraction of the roughly $1 billion that had been invested. In 2016, Shaw Communications acquired Wind for about $1.6 billion. While Shaw paid a premium for the spectrum and customer base, the original investors and the Egyptian parent lost hundreds of millions on the venture. Wind was rebranded as Freedom Mobile and became a modest fourth carrier only after further investment by Shaw and later Québecor.