March 14 (Bloomberg) -- The Canadian government said 30 companies plan to bid for wireless airwaves at its May auction, including new entrants to the market such as Quebecor Media Inc. and Manitoba Telecom Services Inc.

The list, released today by the Industry Canada agency, also includes current wireless providers Rogers Communications Inc., Telus Corp. and BCE Inc., which are seeking to expand services. Rogers, which gets more than half of its revenue from mobile- phone services, said last month it plans to add 550,000 to 625,000 new wireless subscribers in 2008.

New entrants will make the market more competitive and dynamic, Industry Minister Jim Prentice said in November. The industry is 95 percent controlled by Rogers, Telus and BCE. The government will auction 105 megahertz of spectrum on May 27, with a 40-megahertz block of those airwaves open only to companies that have less than 10 percent of the national wireless market.

``We will have competition in the wireless market, there's no doubt,'' said Iain Grant, managing director of SeaBoard Group in Montreal. ``The fact we now have more players will make it a more exciting auction.''

Industry Canada will study the companies' applications and provide a final list of eligible bidders on March 31. The auction may fetch C$1.7 billion ($1.72 billion), according to Dvai Ghose, an analyst with Genuity Capital Markets in Toronto.

Big Bets

Grant said he was surprised by the amount of spectrum Rogers and Telus are going to bid on, based on their respective deposits of C$534 million and C$230 million. The amount required by Industry Canada is a function of the size of the spectrum band and the population covered.

Quebecor, a Canadian newspaper publisher, will bid to expand its Videotron unit, which already offers cable-television and Internet-telephone services. The company submitted a C$317 million deposit to Industry Canada.

Videotron plans to offer wireless services in Quebec, Canada's second most populous province. It also will consider a nationwide network, Pierre Karl Peladeau, Quebecor's chief executive officer, said yesterday in a statement.

Manitoba Telecom and Blackstone Group LP teamed up with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to bid on a chunk of the spectrum. Manitoba Telecom and its partners made a deposit of C$340 million in letters of credit to Industry Canada, according to a statement this week.

Shaw's Entry

Shaw Communications Inc., the country's second-biggest cable-television company, also submitted a bid as a new entrant. It currently provides Internet services to 1.5 million customers and Internet-based phone service to 400,000.

Niagara Networks Inc. was the bidder with the biggest deposit, at C$881 million. Grant said he hasn't heard of the company before. It could be ``a known player who's not bidding through a vehicle we recognize,'' he said.

The smallest bidders were SSI Micro Ltd. and Canquest Communications Canada Ltd., with a deposit of C$80,000 each. SSI wants to build a network in the Yukon and the northern part of Canada, Grant said.

Under the rules, BCE, Telus and Rogers must let the new entrants use their networks for 10 years at market rates as the competitors build their own systems.

Canadian wireless companies had C$12.6 billion in sales in 2006, up 16 percent from the year before, according to the latest data available from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa at adeslongcham@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 14, 2008 18:03 EDT