Public Mobile Gets Funding From China

The CBC is reporting that one of Canada’s new mobile phone companies has just secured financing from China.

In addition to raising money from shareholders, Public Mobile has secured debt financing to the tune of $350 million from the Export-Import Bank of China, and as part of the deal, is choosing China-based ZTE and it’s Canadian counterpart, ZTE Canada for its network hardware and services provider.

While Public Mobile gets a network out of the deal, ZTE makes a bold step into the Canadian wireless market, as this will be their first national wireless project in Canada.

It seems as though the Canadian market is opening up some and the foreign control regulations over wireless carriers are indeed being relaxed, at least in terms of debt financing. Wind Mobile/Globalive is backed by Egyptian Orascom with a lot of debt financing, and now Public Mobile is coming with Chinese-owned debt.