Mobilicity’s mobile plan: Know your customer, know your limits

Building a wireless company from the ground up is challenging enough, but doing it in a market dominated by three large incumbents is even more difficult. But that is what Mobilicity is embarking to do in the Canadian cities of Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmenton, and Ottawa—all markets where giants like Rogers, Telus and Bell compete with wireless services that leverage their enormous landline bases.

Canada is somewhat unique in that it is so vast geographically, that building a national network across territories makes no sense for any small carrier. Outside of high-population areas, there are very few people to whom a company can market services. And in urban areas, the prices for wireless services are said to be the highest of any developed nation, while the penetration is simultaneously the lowest. That fact has posed special challenges to any start-ups trying to go up against the larger players already dominant in Canada.

For many years, it was believed that innovation had somewhat stagnated in Canada’s mobile market because there were no independent wireless competitors who would target under-served areas or go up against incumbents in urban areas with more innovative services and pricing plans.

Mobilicity hopes to shake that status quo up a bit with a community-based, no-surprise approach it hopes will build loyalty among under-served, low-income communities in Canada.

Recognizing much of Canada’s densely populated areas are comprised of immigrants and émigrés (i.e., South Asia and the Philippines), “the name of the game for Mobilicity is to get the largest number of under-served subscribers with the smallest number of assets,” says Dave Dobbin, CEO and president, and no stranger to risk taking, as Mobilicity is his sixth start up. “You find that starting from zero with a dead-cold start-up is a very different exercise than running, ‘retrofitting’ or ‘maintaining’ an existing company.” Dobbin is more than aware that his plans will turn out to be very different than what he originally thought: “Just six months into this, we already realize things already look very different than what we anticipated.”

“Different” does not have a pejorative meaning in this sense, as projections for growth have been far exceeded expectations in a short time frame. The secret to Mobilicity’s success? Knowing the target audience and what it wants, and partnering “smart” to remain focused on core competencies of marketing, sales and distribution.

“’Knowing our customers’ means actually experiencing what they go through, so I, for example, subscribed my wife to a competitor’s lower-tier $25/month service to see what she got for her money,” said Dobbin. “So far, she’s never gotten a bill for less than $140 even though she uses no data. And, she’s never gotten a call from the operator suggesting she move to a different data plan.”