Egyptian financier Naguib Sawiris says if he had it to do all again, he wouldn’t have invested to help launch the Wind Mobile cell phone service in Canada.

“In retrospect,” it was a mistake,” he said in telephone interview Thursday, adding Ottawa has failed to make good on its commitments while clinging to archaic foreign ownership restrictions.

The billionaire art collector said the federal government had promised to enforce the sharing of cellular towers between incumbent wireless providers and new entrants but has not done so.

It has also not enforced roaming requirements that see Wind Mobile calls being dropped when crossing rivals networks, and has not committed to make wireless spectrum available to startups, Sawiris claimed.

He said the government is on notice that failure to deliver on promises could lead to a shakeout in cellphone providers, and higher costs for consumers, adding Canada is unique and misguided in limiting direct foreign investment in telecoms.

“Enough is enough. We are at the end of our patience.”

Company chair and CEO Anthony Lacavera echoed Sawiris’ frustration, saying his company doesn’t have the amount of money it would need to make a competitive bid in the upcoming federal auction for wireless licences.

“I do not have investor support to participate in the auction when the entire deck is stacked against us,” chairman and CEO Anthony Lacavera told The Canadian Press on Friday.

He said Wind has faced “unprecedented legal and regulatory battles” in Canada just to remain competitive.

Without wireless spectrum set aside for companies such as his, “no new entrant will show up, the spectrum will be split by the incumbents,” Lacavera said in an email.

Sawiris is the founder of Orascom Telecom Holding which provided some 80 per cent of the financing for Globalive Communications Corp.’s launch of its Wind Mobile national cellphone network in 2009

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, however, put the network in doubt when it ruled Globalive was a foreign-controlled company that did not meet domestic ownership requirements.

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Industry Minister Tony Clement intervened to allow Globalive to operate in Canada, prompting a lower court to rule that the cabinet overstepped it authority. That decision was successfully appealed by Ottawa and Wind Mobile.

With files from The Canadian Press

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