Canada's Big Three are becoming the Big Four. Shaw Communications, a major cable TV provider in Canada, is buying Wind Mobile, the nation's fourth-largest wireless carrier, for C$1.6 billion.

If you're Canadian, you can check out the details on MobileSyrup. If you aren't, I'd like to give you some context here, as I study the Canadian wireless landscape every year for our Fastest Mobile Networks Canada project.

Canada has very fast LTE networks, but very high prices compared to countries other than the U.S. There are essentially two large, nationwide networks sold by three large companies: Rogers, Bell, and Telus, which share a lot of their network elements and have a history of not engaging in price wars. There are some regional players in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Nova Scotia, but the lack of competition in heavily populated Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia keeps prices high there.

Wind Mobile is the last carrier standing from a bunch of smaller carriers created out of a spectrum auction in 2008. Wind offers much lower prices than the "Big 3" carriers, but it's been unable to build out a nationwide network or launch LTE. So even though it has 940,000 customers—the equivalent of 8.5 million in the U.S.—it isn't considered widely competitive.

Enter Shaw, a major cable TV operator with deep pockets. Shaw's peers in cable and home Internet have always been Rogers, Bell, Telus, Videotron, and other firms, which all now own wireless carriers, too. Shaw bought spectrum in 2008, but decided not to build a wireless network and ended up selling the spectrum to Rogers in 2013. According to the Globe and Mail, Shaw's CEO says that owning Wind will let it compete more vigorously with Telus.

Can Shaw Compete?

What's worrying Canadians is the prospect that Shaw will just join the presumed wireless price cartel, jack up Wind's rates to the level of the other major carriers, and leave Canadians with one less lower-priced option. In his interview with the Globe and Mail, Shaw's CEO didn't do much to quell those fears.

"I see pricing somewhat discounted, but probably closer to the incumbents as we go forward, which allows us to increase ARPU [average revenue per user]," he said.

At least for the time being, Wind will have to keep prices low to attract people to its poorly performing network. I mean, honestly, look at how the carriers compared in Ontario, Canada's most highly populated province:

And although the carrier won some new spectrum in this year's AWS-3 auction, it's far behind the spectrum holdings of the Big 3, especially in low-band spectrum that would cover Canada's sprawling open spaces.

Shaw's next step may be partnering with Quebec's Videotron, which owns low-band 700MHz spectrum in Ontario, BC, and Alberta that it has been reluctant to use. Canads's regulators have historically been comfortable with these kinds of partnerships, as the nationwide Bell/Telus partnership shows.

Then the question becomes: will a fourth wireless carrier really bring price relief to Canadians, or is T-Mobile's "uncarrier" role in the U.S. a fluke? I hate ending stories with "only time will tell," but it will.