Videotron has wanted to be a national cellphone carrier since the 2000s, when it recognized cable television wasn’t a growth industry, Pierre Karl Péladeau testified Monday in the Competition Tribunal hearings over Rogers’s acquisition of Shaw. If Videotron gets to buy Shaw’s discount brand, Freedom—in a forced divestment meant to maintain competition in the wireless market—Videotron intends to be an aggressive player, he said, and has begun negotiating with Bell and Telus to give its customers coverage in parts of the country where it wouldn’t have service of its own. (The Logic)

Talking point: Videotron lost out in early auctions of wireless spectrum to Shaw in the western provinces and Globalive in Ontario, but taking over Shaw’s discount brand Freedom (the corporate descendant of Globalive’s Wind Mobile) now would accelerate its expansion out of Quebec, Péladeau said. Videotron won spectrum outside Quebec by bidding “aggressively and heavily” in the last federal auction but “acquiring Freedom will give us 1.7 million customers—that’s never happened before,” he said.