News

Consequences of Uncompetitiveness

While the stock markets were focused yesterday on comments to a conference from Google’s CFO, Rogers VP Finance was telling another investor conference about Rogers’ take on the broadband marketplace.  John Gossling said:

"The good news, I think, on both is that there is actually some pricing power. Unlike the competitive situation (in the U.S.), the prices on Internet and TV have been actually moving up quite nicely (for Rogers). We don’t seem to have the competitive pressure to take these decent-margin products and move their prices down, so we’re seeing good lift there."

In other words, the Canadian broadband marketplace has little competition, providing companies such as Rogers with the opportunity to raise prices and decrease service (see the current online discussion about Rogers cutting back on BitTorrent access).  This might be music to the ears of investors, but for consumers this does not provide much confidence for the future direction of Internet connectivity in Canada.  Let’s hope the CRTC and municipalities were also listening as they consider muni wifi initiatives and legislative protections against a two-tiered Internet.

4 Comments

  1. Kinda makes me sick to think that they are spewing such crap about to investers. Yes, its true, but seriously, this is NOT a good thing. So you can raise prices, gouge consumers and rip service away becuase there is no competition….what a bloody joke. I am sick of these companies monopolizing this country. Where is the competition! Why isnt there more of it! Why are people to dumb to change??

    Ugh. What a joke.

  2. Victor Rehorst says:

    Really? Not enough competition? Switch to DSL then. My $30/month 3Mb DSL laughs in the face of Rogers Cable. Plus the new band rates for Dry DSL were just rolled out by Bell in Ontario, meaning most Dry DSL customers will start paying at least $7/month less.

  3. Regina not-for profit cableco
    In Regina the not-for profit community cableco (accesscomm.ca) competes with the Crown telco (Sasktel.net).

    Accesscomm.ca is often one of the top ten rated ISP’sin the world according to http://www.dslreports.com/archive?all=1 and six of the top 10 ISP’s are Canadian.

    Both the Crown and the Co-op also have a goal of extending service into the the less dense populations.

    Crown vs Co-op? We’re happily free from Free Enterprise here.

  4. 2 related data points on the ConnectorCos in Canada:

    1-On the same day this news came out I received an email from my ISP, Telus, informing me, “As of April 1, 2006, the price of your Internet service is increasing by $1 per month. Your April Internet billing will reflect this new price.” I’ve been on broadband with Telus since they could roll it out and the price has risen twice now ($5 and now $1) with no appreciable change in service. Hasn’t the price of bandwidth dropped?

    2-The CRTC actually recommends adding a fourth national wireless phone company to trigger some kind of competition: http://www.robhyndman.com/2006/02/27/a-fourth-national-wireless-carrier/

    Oligopolies, ho!