To be a Chinese, thinking about there a thousand children still do not have enough food and education, I feel very sad when I find this news. (From NYTimes)

BEIJING — If you build it, he will come,” Ray Kinsella, the farmer in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” hears, mystically, as he walks through his cornfield. So at seemingly ruinous cost, he razes the cornfield and builds a ball field, and is rewarded with an endless stream of ticket buyers stretching to the rural Iowa horizon.

WINTER PLAY The Bird’s Nest rang with cheers for soccer. Now it invites sledders. More Photos »

In 2008, the Chinese built a ball field — boy, what a ball field — known worldwide for its lattice-like architecture as the Bird’s Nest. Alas, after the 2008 Olympics, the ticket buyers haven’t come. Right now, the Bird’s Nest serves as a winter amusement park known as the Happy Ice and Snow Season. In April, a promoter may stage a celebrity rock concert to “establish China as a world leader for global peace and a healthier planet.” Or not.

After that, the government says it may build a shopping center there.

The accompanying photographs, shot at locales for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, succinctly depict the loneliness of where the long-distance runner once strode. In a week when the United States contemplates how long its future will be spent deep in debt, they also hint at how much its greatest creditor is pinning its own hopes of building wealth on dreams.

Two summers ago, China’s Olympic extravaganza was recognized worldwide, and especially here, as a barely disguised metaphor for this nation’s rise to worldwide importance. Eighteen months later, China is more important than its leaders could have imagined.

But Beijing’s famous Water Cube has hoofed its way from Olympic stadium to light-show concert hall to stage for a Russian performance of “Swan Lake.” Its latest incarnation is as an indoor water park.

In the year after the Olympics, the iconic 91,000-seat Bird’s Nest hosted a Jackie Chan concert, an Italian soccer match, an opera and a presentation of Chinese singing standards. But the local soccer team declined a deal to make it their home field, and the only tenants now are tourists who pay $7 to visit the souvenir shop.

By most accounts, the vendors hawking trinkets outside the stadium outnumber the foreigners who go there to gawk.

Outsiders may find this wasteful. After all, Atlanta’s Olympic stadium became a baseball park, and Calgary’s Saddledome a civic fixture.

Then again, the Olympics seem to bring out profligacy in even buttoned-down governments. Consider Athens, where 21 of the 22 stadiums erected for the 2004 Olympics were reported last year to be unoccupied. The $14.4 billion cost of that party is being cited by some as a source of Greece’s potentially destabilizing fiscal troubles.

If China is different — and China is — it is because fiscal worries on the diminutive scale of Athens hardly register on Beijing’s blotter. Overbuilding is not a prime concern. Indeed, some might call it an economic strategy.

This is a nation of spanking new office towers and hotels and luxury apartment complexes, many built on spec, many financed with state-subsidized loans, or on state-subsidized property, or with low-cost steel from mills built with state subsidies. Many are more empty than full.

According to Colliers International, a real estate firm, Beijing’s central business district offices will stand roughly 38 percent vacant this year. That’s 12 points higher than the figure for San Bernardino, Calif., which the advisory firm REIS says was the worst major office market in America in the last quarter of 2009.

Yet what seems awful in San Bernardino is the norm in effervescent Beijing. Real estate speculation here is rampant, many experts agree that housing and finance are riding bubbles, and everyone expects a big reckoning somewhere — a year? two? — down the line. But there was a reckoning after the Asia panic in 1999, and another reckoning in 2004, and both times the government bailed out the big state-owned banks, and the boom went on.

Indeed, the government forgave the Agricultural Bank of China $120 billion in sour loans just last October without a peep of public protest.

If you build it, the feeling is, they will come. Eventually, in a nation this large, someone will fill the convention center and the water park. And if not, well, build it anyway. Building creates jobs, and feeds prestige, and pumps up the GDP. Here in the nation that is too big to fail, as long as the bad loans don’t overwhelm the good, the waste is tolerable.

“That, to me, is the essence of the Chinese strategy,” Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University professor and a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division, said in a recent telephone interview. “Just keep the machine going fast enough.”

Vice-Premier Wang Qishan publicly interrogated the head of Sany Heavy Industry Ltd Co, a big engineering firm, about his management capabilities, asking if he was sensitive to cultural differences and the difficulty of dealing with unionized labor in the west.

“If the other side’s engineers resign, are you really going to send people from Changsha overseas, and make the whole company speak Hunanese?” he asked, referring to the dialect spoken in Hunan, a province of nearly 70 million people whose capital is Changsha.

The gulf that so exercised Wang — in a scene played out in public last year during the annual session of parliament — has since been on full display in a cultural and political skirmish between the Chinese government and U.S. internet search engine Google.

That row, over censorship in China, will hardly make western politicians and consumers feel more kindly about China or its corporations as potential suitors. China’s ambitions, and how they might be affected by the Google controversy, are likely to be a hot topic at next week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos and beyond.

How readily such differences in values are bridged could have an important bearing on whether Chinese companies can graduate from being mere low-cost manufacturers to secure a role on the world stage commensurate with the country’s growing economic clout.

China has seemingly effortlessly amassed the world’s biggest stockpile of foreign exchange reserves, it is overtaking Germany as the biggest exporting nation and now has a car market bigger than America’s. Now comes the hard part.

Chinese companies are snapping up natural resources firms across the globe and picking over the carcasses of car marquees laid low by the financial crisis. The value of Chinese outbound M&A, at $42.6 billion last year, was below a record $73 billion from 2008, but nonetheless accounted for China’s highest share yet of the global total at 7.5 percent, Thomson Reuters data show.

The international ambitions of Chinese firms, not content with their 1.3 billion-strong domestic market, can only accelerate. With an eye to the added value in expertise, Beijing is especially keen to encourage its companies to forage abroad for high-technology, cleantech know-how and established brands in addition to securing further supplies of oil, gas and commodities to feed the country’s thrumming industries.

But bankers and consultants say the obstacles that Chinese firms must overcome are immense: money cannot buy overnight the managerial expertise and cultural sensitivity needed to build a multinational with operations and brands spanning the globe.

BARRIERS TO ENTRY

Jim Hildebrandt, managing director in Asia of Bain Capital, a big private equity firm, said relatively few Chinese companies had teams of specialists to hunt for acquisitions. And often, the targets that came into their crosshairs were too big to be easily run by managers with little international experience.

“I do think we are entering a new era of acquisitions by Chinese companies overseas and that this era will be one of offensive acquisitions — so acquiring positions overseas, manufacturing facilities to expand the breadth of scale on which you operate,” he said.

“Many Chinese companies are ready to do this, but the level of merger and acquisition skills is probably the major constraint at this stage.”

He gave an example of a company that ran the rule over a multinational without initially realizing that Chinese nationals are barred from entering 10 of the countries in which its target had operations. “I can tell you that it’s very hard to run a company if you’re not allowed to enter the country.”

Some Chinese firms have already learned the hard way about the importance of adapting to the local environment.

In 2007, President Hu Jintao had to cancel plans to cut the ribbon on a $200 million smelter at a Chinese-owned copper mine in Zambia after miners rioted over harsh working conditions. Chinese contractors also periodically spark anger for relying excessively on Chinese labor and materials when building roads, dams and housing across the continent.

In Algiers, tensions spilled over last August when about 100 local residents and Chinese migrants fought a mass brawl using knives and bludgeons in a clash put down in part to cultural differences.

PATCHY TRACK RECORD

Chinese suitors looking to buy Hummer from General Motors and Volvo from Ford are certainly overlooking a track record in high-profile manufacturing acquisitions that to date can charitably be described as patchy.

The jury is still out on the purchase by computer maker Lenovo <0992.HK> of IBM’s laptop business in 2005. Lenovo initially concentrated on expanding internationally before the global downturn led to deep losses and prompted the company to turn its attention back to the Chinese market.

TCL Corp <000100.SZ> has two disasters to its name: the electronics manufacturer was hailed as a trailblazer for China when it formed a joint venture with its French rival Thomson SA in 2003.

But it failed to tap into growing demand for flat-screen TV sets and the venture was declared insolvent in 2007. TCL’s subsequent purchase of then-Alcatel’s handset business was also a fiasco, largely because the Chinese company did not anticipate the high integration costs and found its phones were not competitive on the global market.

Car maker SAIC Motor Corp <600104.SS> lost its shirt investing in Ssanyong: its South Korean partner went bankrupt.

TACKLING SOPHISTICATED CONSUMERS

So Chinese companies seeking to trade up the value chain will clearly first need to broaden their skills. The business of digging up iron ore or extracting oil is a world away from manufacturing and selling global retail products, and China has scant experience of managing overseas workforces or marketing to sophisticated consumers.

Yet this is where the profits are to be earned.

Benefiting from cheap labor, Chinese manufacturers have become unbeatable on price. But one study, by the University of California, Irvine, in 2007, estimated that Chinese workers contributed only 1 per cent of the retail price in Western markets of an Apple iPod. No wonder Beijing wants its factories to grab a larger share of the profits from research and development, design, marketing and branding.

“I think Chinese companies will learn by doing, but, just being realistic, they still have a long way to go on that front,” said Philip Partnow, deputy head of investment banking at UBS Securities in Beijing.

“The good news about that is that Chinese companies are aware of the issue and are sensitive to the issue.”

Partnow said some Chinese companies with which UBS has worked hard had realized it made sense to get the managers of foreign firms they had acquired to spearhead further M&A: “So in addition to learning by doing there is a desire to acquire management expertise through the deal. That’s very smart.”

STILL PUNY

Given all the deterrents, it is not surprising China has a long way to go on outbound investment. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China’s foreign direct investment outflows are still puny relative to the size of its economy. China’s total FDI stock at the end of 2008 at $148 billion was 3.4 percent of its GDP that year.

By comparison, the figure was 14 percent for developing economies and 26.9 percent for the global economy.

Establishing a stronger presence on the global corporate stage will also help spread the risk of the country’s investments. China has the world’s biggest stockpile of official foreign exchange reserves, totaling $2.4 trillion, of which about two thirds is invested in U.S. bonds.

Rising costs at home, as well as a likely further appreciation of the yuan, are among the forces to gradually push Chinese manufacturers offshore. Deutsche Bank, in a January 6 report, said it expected the Chinese currency to gain 50 percent in value over the next 10 years.

GETTING CLOSE TO MARKET …

There are even broader considerations. Successful expansion overseas would enable China to reduce its dependence on energy-intensive, polluting manufacturing and take production closer to the markets it serves. Aluminum Corp of China Ltd (Chalco) <2600.HK><601600.SS> made such a move in 2007, agreeing to co-build a 1-million-tonne-a-year aluminum smelter costing $3 billion in Saudi Arabia.

“When our infrastructure becomes saturated and we don’t need so many reinforced steel bars, where should the installed capacity go to?” asked Xu Lejiang, chairman of Baosteel Group <600019.SS>, China’s largest steel maker. “We need to transfer it to emerging markets, including Africa, Latin America, Middle East and other Asian countries,” he told a recent forum. “Chinese steelmakers are targeting projects in those regions.”

… OR STAYING CLOSE TO HOME

Depending on the industry, it makes sense for Chinese firms to start close to home. Just over half Chinese M&A investments overseas are within the Asia Pacific region.

Such acquisitions are easier for managers to handle, not least because the time-zone difference is smaller and they are more likely to be able to recruit ethnic Chinese who can bridge the culture and language gap.

“More frequently the right answer is to consolidate in Asia and start with a smaller acquisition,” said Bain’s Hildebrandt. “Our experience has been that companies that started successfully doing smaller acquisitions are more able and more likely to be successful at the big acquisitions later.”

POLITICAL INCONVENIENCE

But to acquire sophisticated technology, China has no choice but to set its sights on the United States, Europe and Japan. And that raises the perennial problem of political opposition to the sale of what are perceived to be treasured national assets.

China is still smarting from the failure by CNOOC <0883.HK>, one of its big oil companies, to buy Unocal of California in 2005. Similarly, a bid last year by state-owned metals giant Chinalco to raise its stake in global miner Rio Tinto foundered on hostile public opinion in Australia.

“Political sensitivities will always be there,” said Brian Gu, head of Greater China mergers and acquisitions at JP Morgan. “Chinese players are going to be more sophisticated and capable of approaching these sensitive issues. But I don’t think these noises will go away.”

One corporate adviser went further, saying Chinese companies had all-but given up on buying U.S. businesses because of the depth of protectionist sentiment.

COMFORT ZONES

Other obstacles are home-grown. To fully reap the benefits of an acquisition, as Japanese car manufacturers for example have discovered, a good local manager often has to be left in charge. This is not something Chinese companies are always comfortable doing.

“I think that is a challenge,” said Gordon Orr, chairman of Asia at consultants McKinsey and Co. “The trust-based culture that you see in top leadership teams is very deeply set, and the bias toward sending someone out who has been on the team for 20 years — because they trust him, not because he’s ever lived in Germany or the UK before — is very deep.”

The China head of one Wall Street bank put it more bluntly: most state-owned Chinese companies were petrified at being pushed to go beyond their comfort zone and venture abroad.

Investment bankers, consultants and lawyers are, of course, only too willing to smooth the path for Chinese companies looking overseas. The problem is that those same Chinese companies are not used to paying top-dollar for professional services, and so are reluctant to seek outside advice.

Xiang Bing, dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, told a forum in Beijing: “In China, we don’t have as much global management talent as in other countries. Take India, for example. You can find many Indian senior vice presidents in multinational companies, but not many Chinese.”

In financial services, Jerry Lou, Morgan Stanley’s China strategist, said Chinese institutions, especially investment banks, were still too weak to take control of their counterparts in developed economies.

“It is not like buying a building, a mine or a port,” Lou said. “You’re just wasting money on an empty company if you can’t manage the people.”

He expects it will take at least another decade before Chinese banks are truly ready for overseas deals. “Remember, China did not have a stock market until 1992,” he pointed out, to show how China is still a novice in high finance.

BICULTURAL MANAGEMENT

That’s one reason why the relatively simple business of extracting commodities is likely to keep grabbing the Chinese M&A headlines for some years yet.

“Our demand for energy and resources will grow,” Zhang Xiaoqiang, a vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s powerful central planner, said in Beijing recently. “We must take part in global resource allocation in a more active manner.”

As for manufacturing, managing a global supply chain with its attendant complications of tax regimes, import-export requirements and just-in-time logistics requires much broader expertise than the ability to marshal cheap labor to produce goods to a foreign company’s specifications. Not to mention dealing with local government and unions, and the intricacies of managing on foreign soil.

“A key factor in the success of this type of overseas acquisition is to have a management that is bicultural,” said Christine Lambert-Goue, managing director in the Beijing office of Invest Securities China.

Some Chinese companies have learned this. China International Marine Containers has bought several foreign companies, licensed advanced German technology and hired foreign executives to run its European operations. The resulting leap in productivity cut the time it takes to make a container to about five minutes from 20, according to Winter Nie and Abraham Lu of the IMD business school in Lausanne.

ORGANIC IS BEST

Still, the obstacles to successful M&A are so daunting that organic expansion might be a better solution for Chinese companies with a good product range, especially in emerging markets where distribution channels are not deeply entrenched and local competition is not insuperable, said McKinsey’s Orr.

“Organic often becomes the best way to go,” he said. “You have an ability to ramp up quickly, like some of the Chinese white goods manufacturers are doing in India these days. You don’t have to buy your way in. You can buy build your way in.”

Haier <1169.HK><600690.SS>, for example, is doing well at the low end of the Indian market, in much the same way that its keenly priced mini-refrigerators are a big hit in U.S. student dormitories. The telecommunications equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE Corp <0763.HK><000063.SZ> have also shown powerful growth without significant acquisition.

Organic growth has certainly been the major driver for Japan, which was once synonymous with cheap shoddy goods, and South Korea, whose cars were a laughing stock 20 years ago: both are now at the global cutting-edge of autos and consumer products.

There is no reason why China, either through M&A or alone, cannot follow in their footsteps. The country is rich in engineering and manufacturing skills, has benefited from significant technology transfer from foreign companies, and has overseas corporate expansion in its political sights.

A success of such mooted acquisitions as Volvo and Hummer could prove a catalyst, giving other companies the confidence to take the plunge.

“It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen more quickly than all of us would probably predict,” said Gu of JP Morgan.

(Additional reporting by Zhou Xin and Aileen Wang; Editing by Sara Ledwith and Jim Impoco)
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Shanghai has had its first new issues disaster. XD Electric fell 1.4 percent on its first day of trading. That might not sound so bad, until you consider that Chinese initial public offerings in the last six months rose an average 80 percent on their first day. It might be a welcome sign that China’s stock market investors are become more discerning.

XD Electric, the first IPO of 2010, suffered from two headwinds. One was a general market pull-back on fears China will begin monetary tightening. The Shanghai Composite Index has fallen 5 percent since the electrical equipment maker priced its shares a week ago, with heavy equipment firms down 8 percent. XD Electric was priced at the top of its indicated range, a 26 percent price-to-earnings premium to the market. Taking that into account, XD Electric’s performance is not as bad as it looks.

Chinese investors will be quick to point their fingers too at the securities regulator for rushing too many companies to the market in its effort to cool asset prices. China is unique in that regulator, not the market, plays a main role in deciding whether companies can raise money. In the second half of 2009 alone, 111 companies came to the market. Some 10,000 more are still eligible, according to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Hopefully, the regulator will hold its nerve despite this rare first-day flop. Tradable equities still account for only a little more than a third of China’s GDP, while total loans outstanding are close to 120 percent of GDP, higher than the global average. Increased supply of new stocks should help bring down the market’s volatility, and reduce companies’ reliance on banks. Better to have more IPOs than pricier IPOs.

It’s too early to say whether XD Electric was merely unlucky. What seems like investors’ moment of clarity may be nothing more than jitters over China’s falling markets. But if Shanghai is to become a fully functioning market, first-day frenzies must become a thing of the past. If investors must work harder for their returns, so be it.

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Let me know if I should add/improve a rebuttal, and especially if you can come up with reasonable criticism that is hard to rebut!

HANDSETS:

Competitive pricing: It is unfair to compare WIND’s no-contract price of the BlackBerryBold 9700, for example, to Rogers’ subsidized three-year contract price. Rogers = $599, WIND = $450. Sure, you may even get the Bold for free from Rogers, but you end up paying much more over the 24-36 months of its lifetime due to plan commitments, thus making it quite a pricey device. With WIND, you can upgrade/change your phone anytime you want, period.

It is a well-known practise of the Big Three to artificially inflate the no-contract price in order to give you a “deal” on the contract price (like this), whereas WIND offers their phones at cost and barely makes any money on devices.

Simple payment: Pay the entire cost upfront, and it’s yours to keep (and unlockable after three months). Or, WIND will soon introduce a Koodo-like tab system so you don’t have to drop $450 all at once for a Bold. Still no-contract, though!

Increasing availability: According to reports, over 177 million AWS phones will be in use by 2013. Handsets are limited now since AWS is relatively new (only 12 million phones in use now), but manufacturers are keen on grabbing as much market share as possible — just look at the N900, Nexus One, HD2, and an upcoming AWS iPhone. AWS is the future, which is why Rogers, Bell, and Telus all have their own 1700mHz frequencies ready to be deployed — when that happens (and it will or else they lose it to a new auction) the argument that buying a WIND phone “limits” you to usage solely on WIND’s network won’t have a leg to stand on anymore.
PLANS:

Best value: If you try to grasp the feedback surrounding WIND’s plans, you’ll notice that it’s overwhelmingly WIND vs. discount carriers such as Fido, instead of Rogers. WIND wins, simply put — they can best even the “cheapest” of carriers. Don’t forget that Rogers continues to charge an SAF under a misleading different name, and that all the voice add-ons can make a $25 plan turn into $60 a month (as mine did). With WIND, you pay $45 maximum for everything voice.

Unlimited is the trend: Some try to make the case that unlimited plans won’t be used by “95% of customers”, as Mary did (where’s her source?), but there’s a reason why carriers in Europe, Asia, and even the US offer them. AT&T and Verizon are currently in a price war for the cheapest unlimited plans!

Targeted data plans: WIND’s marketing strategy is aimed at high-end, data-heavy users, especially since new handsets are produced to specifically suck up loads of data (even the iPhone uses plenty). That said, they ARE planning to introduce a mid-level data plan for lighter users. Even if a WIND subscriber doesn’t have a data plan, their usage rate is $4/MB versus $25+/MB with the Big Three, a sixfold difference!

Absolute freedom: With WIND, you have absolute freedom to pair a handset with a phone; let’s see any of the Big Three allow you to have a prepaid $15 voice plan and no data with the Bold 9700, or any smartphone. Oh, and without charging you ridiculous activation fees, SAF/911 fees, ECFs, et cetera…

No contracts: WIND refuses to employ contracts, meaning that subscribers can jump ship any time (or the flip side: they can adjust their voice and data plans at will), thus WIND needs to work hard to maintain customer loyalty. When Rogers locks you down to a three-year plan, they can (and do) change the terms as they wish due to unmentioned clauses in the contract because you cannot escape.

COVERAGE:

Ah, yes, coverage. As a loyal WIND subscriber and fan, I will be the first to admit that WIND has experienced problems with coverage, and that their coverage areas are currently limited. However, it is completely unreasonable for critics to exploit that as some unyielding fact.

First of all, within the first two weeks, WIND coverage for me went from no signal half the time and 80% of calls dropped to 99% signal uptime and 3% of calls dropped — certainly comparable, if not better, than what I had with Rogers. Today, a month after launch, I get a random signal cut out maybe once a week, if even, and a dropped call when said signal cut out occurs. I bounce around the GTA from Mississauga to Downtown to Oshawa — pretty much the entire GTA coverage map.

Have patience!: What can one honestly expect from a brand-new company on a brand-new network? Right now, the Big Three is falsely implying that WIND’s unlimited usage isn’t unlimited, when in actuality the voice and data are unlimited if you are within the coverage area, which itself is expanding as fast as possible. Edmonton and Ottawa will be included in “Home Zone” next month, and Vancouver a few months later, and coverage will be coast to coast (sans Quebec, where I hope they have a roaming agreement with Videotron) within a few years.

It would certainly be interesting to see how long reps from Rogers, Bell, or Telus admit it took their companies to achieve true coast to coast network coverage.

Unreasonable comparisons: Complaining about the lack of coverage area while WIND is just starting out and Rogers/Bell/Telus have had a two-decade head start is akin to 20-year-old me complaining that my baby cousin cannot write a lengthy dissertation about the merits Keynesian economics in a capitalist society, let alone form basic words; therefore, she must be doomed to failure forever, right?

Cheap roaming: With regards to roaming, the Big Three equivalent would be long distance, especially relevant since they have shrunk their local calling area (WIND’s local calling/data area is EVERYWHERE they have coverage!). Calling Toronto to Pickering, just a 20-minute drive, will cost you your minute (normally $0.15-0.25/min) PLUS $0.35/min long distance, so you’re guaranteed to be paying more than WIND’s roaming rate.

And what if I was in sunny California? I’m still paying $0.25/min total with WIND versus probably $1+/min with Rogers. No matter how it’s spun, WIND’s roaming is still cheaper than the Big Three’s long distance.

CUSTOMER SERVICE:

What service?!: Amusingly, pro-Big Three critics of WIND consistently fail to mention their company’s customer care record, possibly because it is severely lacking in the “care” section. The main reason I eagerly switched from Rogers to WIND was due to the fact that I had repeatedly horrible experiences dealing with customer service reps, even in situations where Rogers was at fault.

WIND, in contrast: WIND has promoted and continues to adhere to the philosophy of meaningful “conversations” and “listening” to fans, critics, customers, and employees. Within four weeks, I have received four calls from WIND employees asking if I’m still happy with the service, and what feedback I could provide to assist them in continually improving. I’m thrilled. Though not without their faults (see: port blocking issue), WIND still impresses by responding quickly (see: unblocking ports within 24 hours!).

As well, I always manage to have real chats with WIND employees as friend and not foe; when was the last time you shared a hearty laugh with a Bell rep?

Equal, fair treatment: You don’t need to fight tooth and nail with WIND to better understand/receive their services. WIND offers the same simple, value-packed plans to everyone, prepaid or postpaid. We consumers should stop accepting the fact that one must threaten the retentions department in order to get a cheaper plan, and start to commend carriers such as WIND for walking down the two-way street of respect.

It’s about the attitude: It’s inevitable that as WIND expands, it will weaken personal connections; but look at the other carriers, are they any better? At the very least, WIND adheres to the attitude of constant improvement and self-betterment, rather than merely trying to sell you a phone and a plan.

THE FLIP SIDE…

In all fairness, I must also present reasons as to why WIND may not be suitable for every single Canadian consumer on the market — and really, they’re not. They just happen to offer plans with great value if you ARE the type of user who enjoys freedom from counting usage and concerns about overage fees, the freedom to use any compatible handset on any plan, and the freedom to end a customer service conversation with a smile on your face.

Your usage is minimal: Stick with a real discount carrier who can offer you $100 of minutes for a whole year, you’ll save the most money.

Your patience is minimal: It creates a headache for everyone when one of the parties involved cannot handle potential speedbumps and creates further trouble. However, personally speaking, my bad experiences with WIND are still better than my past bad experiences with Rogers.

Retentions plans: If you currently have an amazing retentions plan that suits your needs better than WIND could, great! WIND’s entry into the Canadian wireless market was to foster better competition, and you would be an example of success.

Contracts aren’t scary for some: Not everyone receives horrible network and customer service from the Big Three. If they’re treating some customers properly, we should applaud them and encourage them to apply the same positive attitude to all their customers.

You work for the Big Three: If that’s the case, I beg you to drop the arrogance and focus on improving your own offerings rather than simply mocking WIND’s. It’s your livelihood, after all, and by the time you realize you should have changed it may be too late. WIND becoming the Big One would be three times worse than the Big Three we have now!

In the end, whether one signs with WIND or not, it is imperative to have patience and give them the same opportunity afforded to Rogers, Bell, and Telus to expand and stabilize before writing them off as nothing but a brief gust of hope. But don’t hold your breath, either; always thoroughly research your options before fully deciding upon the best course of action. It’s my opinion, if you can’t tell, that WIND undoubtedly represents the best choice in wireless today.

All those who work in the public sector know that performance measurement has become an increasingly dominant part of their life.

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