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Neither WIND nor Mobilicity (now in receivership) has any cash to spend, but that didn’t stop WIND backer Tony Lacavera and company executives from gleefully tweeting Mr. Moore’s plans. “Head’s up Robellus!’ said Mr. Lacavera, “Govt spectrum plan ensures we have access to the spectrum we need.”

Simon Lockie, WIND’s chief regulatory officer, said “Today’s hugely important spectrum announcement is the kind of bold, realistic and committed gov’t action that puts #consumers first.”

Actually, it puts #WINDfirst. What Mr. Lacavera is really happy about is that Ottawa continues to manipulate telecom rules in ways that will bail WIND and other firms out of their financial and market failures.

It is also now all too clear that the Harper government has swallowed the idea of a fourth-wireless strategy whose final objective is to artificially create the circumstances that will install Quebecor/Videotron as the vehicle to achieve the radical objectives of the wireless activists on the left.

In another ideological world than the populist consumer-first one inhabited by the Harper Conservatives, WIND and some other Canadian firms ­— maybe Telus? — might get taken over by foreign telecom players.

But the Tories keep playing from a narrow nationalist platform, more interested in using regulation and intervention to create a fourth wireless firm than allowing market forces and actual competition to rule.

This is going to be a long, risky and expensive adventure. Canada is essentially trying to do what other countries — mostly under market pressure — are growing to realize is uneconomic. Nations with fourth carriers are moving to three carriers, as mergers and market forces lead to consolidations. Some with three are moving to two. Consolidations appear to be underway in the United States as well.