BCE, TELUS and Rogers Fell Less Than Half as Hard as the US Carriers on the SpaceX Deal
SpaceX’s spectrum announcement hit carriers on both sides of the border on Friday October 9, and it did not hit them equally. Canada’s three national carriers fell an average of 4.22% that session. The three US national carriers fell 10.61%. The Canadian reaction was about two fifths of the American one. At 10:22 a.m. ET on Thursday October 15, with BCE at $29.00, TELUS (T.TO) at $11.995 and Rogers at $45.46 on live partial-bar prices rather than closes, that one session is still the only thing separating the two groups. Part of the reason is written into Canadian spectrum policy. The month behind these prices is a harder read.
The entire cross-border gap was priced in one session
T-Mobile US fell 13.27% on October 9, AT&T (T, New York) 9.81% and Verizon 8.75%. The Canadian names fell shallower: Cogeco 7.11%, BCE 5.47%, Rogers 3.70%, Quebecor 3.68% and TELUS (T.TO) 3.50%. They were falling against a rising tape, too, with the S&P/TSX Composite up 1.48% that day and the S&P 500 up 0.59%.
The rest of that session had nothing to do with telecom. Our recap of the October 9 TSX session covers the 68,300-job employment drop behind the day and the financials that carried the afternoon.
One-day price change on October 9, 2026, the session SpaceX announced its agreement to buy low-band spectrum in the United States. Canadian names in Canadian dollars, US names in US dollars. Source: our arithmetic on Yahoo Finance daily closes.
Since that Friday, nothing has distinguished Canada
| Name | Price, live at 10:22 a.m. ET Oct 15 | Today | From Oct 9 close | Vs Oct 8 close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TELUS (T.TO) | $11.995 | +4.03% | +8.75% | +4.94% |
| Rogers (RCI-B.TO) | $45.46 | +2.97% | +7.07% | +3.11% |
| BCE (BCE.TO) | $29.00 | +3.57% | +8.21% | +2.29% |
| Quebecor (QBR-B.TO) | $64.56 | +0.19% | +3.68% | -0.14% |
| Cogeco (CCA.TO) | $51.15 | +2.69% | +5.03% | -2.44% |
| Verizon (VZ) | $45.395 | +2.19% | +8.99% | -0.54% |
| AT&T (T, New York) | $23.705 | +2.84% | +6.88% | -3.61% |
| T-Mobile US (TMUS) | $162.55 | +3.02% | +9.40% | -5.11% |
| S&P/TSX Composite | 35,629.55 | +0.13% | -0.10% | +1.38% |
Canadian names in Canadian dollars, US names in US dollars. Prices are the live partial daily bar at 10:22 a.m. ET on October 15, 2026, not closes. Source: our arithmetic on Yahoo Finance daily closes and live quotes.
Read the fourth column. From the October 9 close, Verizon is up 8.99%, T-Mobile US 9.40% and AT&T (T, New York) 6.88%, against TELUS at 8.75%, BCE at 8.21% and Rogers at 7.07%. The US carriers have bounced as hard or harder, while the Composite is 0.10% below its October 9 close. The last column flatters Canada for one reason: these names started from a shallower hole. BCE above its October 8 close is a one-session baseline artefact, not a reward earned since.
Today is a bid on both sides of the border rather than a Canadian catalyst, with Verizon up 2.19%, AT&T (T, New York) 2.84%, T-Mobile US 3.02% and the US communication services ETF XLC 1.25%, against BCE at 3.57%, TELUS at 4.03% and Rogers at 2.97%. Currency is not carrying the Canadian figures either. The Canadian dollar is up 0.52% against the US dollar since October 8, which makes the three national carriers’ returns slightly larger in US dollars, and Canadian dollars are the basis a Canadian holder should use.
The tower landlords posted the biggest gains in the group
The single largest move in this group on October 9 was not in a carrier. Crown Castle rose 15.60% and American Tower 9.30%, the two biggest gains in this set of names that day, and both have held them: Crown Castle is up 11.35% and American Tower 4.70% since September 15.
The month behind these prices is where a holder actually lives
October 8 was near a one-month low for all three Canadian carriers, which is why measuring from it looks kind. From September 15, TELUS is down 5.25%, Rogers 8.90% and BCE 9.09%, with Cogeco down 11.76%. The US carriers sit in the same range: T-Mobile US down 9.93%, AT&T (T, New York) 10.28% and Verizon 10.40%. Over that month the Composite is up 0.13% and the S&P 500 up 1.48%.
So a BCE holder is down 9.09% in a month while the index they measure against went nowhere, and that is indistinguishable from a Verizon holder’s month. TELUS, down 5.25%, is the only one clearly apart from the group. BCE and Rogers sit about a point ahead of the best of the three Americans, which is not much of a reward for a month.
Share price indexed to each name’s September 15, 2026 close. Toronto was closed October 12 for Thanksgiving. The final point is the live quote at 10:22 a.m. ET on October 15, 2026. Source: our arithmetic on Yahoo Finance data.
Canada’s framework runs satellite coverage on a carrier’s own spectrum
The structural reason a US licence does less here is written down. ISED’s February 2025 decision on supplemental mobile coverage by satellite, SMSE-001-25 states in Decision D12 that “mobile service providers that have an executed SMCS Agreement(s) in place with a satellite operator will be eligible to hold generic earth station spectrum licences”, and in Decision D13 limits that authority “in scope to only those service areas and frequency blocks held by the flexible use licensee”.
Under that framework, supplemental satellite coverage runs on a Canadian licensee’s own spectrum, in that licensee’s own service areas, under an agreement with it. The limit matters as much as the claim: this is policy rather than permanence, and ISED can revisit it.
Rogers’ own release puts SpaceX’s Canadian route on Rogers spectrum
The practical version of that is three years old. In Rogers’ April 26, 2023 release on its SpaceX agreement, the company describes bringing satellite-to-phone coverage to Canada using “Rogers national wireless spectrum”, starting with SMS text and extending to voice and data across remote wilderness, national parks and rural highways. The release does not call the arrangement exclusive. It does put SpaceX’s announced path to a Canadian handset on a Canadian carrier’s spectrum.
The spectrum SpaceX is buying was a forced sale nobody wanted
On the reported terms, SpaceX announced on October 9 an agreement to buy up to 14 megahertz of low-band spectrum in the United States for about US$8 billion in cash, with Grain Management as the seller, subject to FCC approval.
How Grain came to hold it is first-hand. The FCC’s Memorandum Opinion and Order DA-26-653, released July 1, 2026 in WT Docket 25-178, records T-Mobile selling its 800 MHz licences to Grain for “$2.9 billion cash consideration and Grain’s 600 MHz spectrum licenses” on applications filed in March 2025. The same order says the Department of Justice, as a condition of approving the T-Mobile-Sprint transaction, “required T-Mobile to divest these 800 MHz licenses with certain limitations on the entities to whom the spectrum could be divested”. It describes those licences as having “been underutilized in recent years”. A footnote cites T-Mobile’s 10-K noting “that DISH Network was offered but did not purchase the 800 MHz spectrum”, its option having “expired on its own terms on April 1, 2024”.
The $2.9 billion is therefore not a valuation to set beside the reported $8 billion. It was the price of a forced divestiture of underused spectrum into a restricted pool of eligible buyers, after the obvious buyer passed. Direct-to-device demand is what changed. T-Mobile US, the seller, is the name that fell 13.27% on the announcement.
The FCC had already put a 2026 clock on this spectrum
The July order did more than approve a transfer. The Bureau imposed “strict conditions designed to ensure that Grain does not warehouse spectrum” and instead “puts the spectrum to use in a rapid and meaningful way” across terrestrial and direct-to-device services. It rejected Grain’s proposed interim and final buildout deadlines of six and twelve years, imposing “three (3) and eight (8) years” instead, and tied the performance requirements to “submission of complete D2D applications before the end of 2026”. The applicants described Grain’s plan as a “near-immediate competitive process to solicit proposals from potential D2D operators” for the band.
Nothing in that record says who won the solicitation. It does show that a regulator had put a date on this kind of transaction months before October 9, and how long consent takes: T-Mobile’s own applications ran from March 2025 to a July 1, 2026 grant, and the SpaceX purchase needs the Commission’s consent as well.
The other side of the trade
The satellite names were not the winners. SpaceX closed up 1.25% on its announcement day and has fallen in each of the last three sessions, 4.21% on October 13, 2.80% on October 14 and 4.28% so far today, leaving it 10.40% below its October 9 close. AST SpaceMobile is 27.88% below its October 8 close.
The Canadian reaction was not uniform either. Cogeco’s 7.11% fall was the steepest of the five Canadian names here and it is still 2.44% below October 8, with Quebecor 0.14% below. All three US carriers also remain below their pre-announcement closes, which is not what a market pricing the deal as harmless to incumbents would look like.
What the declared dividends pay at these live prices
Price moves and income are separate questions. TELUS cut its quarterly dividend to $0.1875 on July 30, 2026, which the company called “a reset of 55 per cent to an annualized amount of $0.75 per share”, and our coverage of the 55% dividend cut has the detail. At the live $11.995 price, that declared rate is a 6.25% yield. BCE’s declared quarterly dividend is $0.4375, declared August 6, 2026 and annualising to $1.75, which at the live $29.00 price is 6.03%, measured after BCE’s own reset in May 2025.
Both are declared rates rather than trailing payments, and the question they raise next is coverage rather than price, which is what we rank on in our high-yield Canadian dividend stocks page.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Share prices and index levels are from Yahoo Finance, pulled once into a single frozen snapshot at 10:22 a.m. ET on October 15, 2026. Prices described as live are the partial daily bar at that moment, not closes. Canadian names are quoted in Canadian dollars and US names in US dollars, and figures described as our arithmetic are computed from those closes. The spectrum transaction history, the buildout conditions and every quoted passage about Grain Management come from the Federal Communications Commission’s Memorandum Opinion and Order DA-26-653, released July 1, 2026 in WT Docket 25-178. The terms of SpaceX’s own October 9 purchase are as reported and are described that way in the text.
