Post Tagged with: "Wireless"

Rogers on the corner of Robson and Seymour by Jeffery Simpson https://flic.kr/p/hZGAN (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Message Received: Why Unlimited Wireless Plans Show Government’s Emphasis on New Competition is Being Heard

Long available in other countries, “unlimited” wireless plans arrived among the big three carriers in Canada yesterday with Rogers launching new unlimited options that offer 10 GB of data at full speed and unlimited additional data at a far slower speeds of 256Kbps. While some criticize the throttled overage speeds or the inferiority of the Canadian plans when compared to what is available in the U.S., this is a good step for consumers that ration their data each month in fear of incurring significant overage charges. Indeed, the comparative data shows Canadian consumers use less data than consumers elsewhere, particularly subscribers with Rogers, Bell, and Telus. Moreover, with carriers generating more than $1 billion per year in overage fees, the change is not trivial with some analysts characterizing the move as a negative for Canada’s wireless industry.

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June 13, 2019 3 comments News
More than $2 million to keep young adults from care connected by Province of British Columbia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/TnHNkA

Supporting a More Competitive Canadian Wireless Market: Speak Out on Navdeep Bains’ Proposed CRTC Policy Direction

Last month, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains took his most significant policy step to date to address telecommunications concerns by issuing a proposed policy direction to the CRTC based on competition, affordability, consumer interests, and innovation. As I noted at the time, the proposed policy direction will make a difference as those perspectives will become a more prominent part of the regulatory process that cannot be easily dismissed.

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April 4, 2019 1 comment News
Verizon by Mike Mozart (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/oVfwNQ

“Immediate War Footing”: Phil Lind Recounts the Big Three Battle Against Wireless Competition in Canada

This week’s report that Canada is an outlier on wireless services with carriers generating more revenue per SIM than carriers in other countries and Canadian consumers on the low end of data usage, represents the latest in a long line of similar independent reports that confirm Canada’s status as a high-cost, low usage wireless market. Indeed, a government-commissioned comparative study, CRTC data, OECD data, and Rewheel Research all tell a similar story. Given that there is little to debate about the state of Canadian wireless pricing, the big question is now what Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains is prepared to do about it.

A new book from long-time Rogers executive Phil Lind provides insights into the backlash that any significant efforts to inject more competition into the market is likely to face from the incumbent carriers. The book contains several pages recounting the carrier battle in 2013 against Verizon entering the Canadian market with the active support of the then-Harper government. The story pulls back the curtain on lobbying efforts that involve active coordination by top tier executives at each company, active lobbying of MPs, journalists, and market analysts, as well as advertising campaigns designed to fight back against market-opening policy measures. Lind starts the story:

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January 24, 2019 3 comments News
https://tefficient.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/tefficient-industry-analysis-3-2018-mobile-data-usage-and-revenue-1H-2018-per-country-final-17-Jan-2019.pdf

The Canadian Wireless Story: Comparative Data Shows World’s Highest Carrier Revenues Per SIM

Tefficient, a European-based consultancy on the wireless market, released its latest report this morning comparing pricing and usage in the global wireless market. The data, which incorporates the most recent CRTC numbers on the Canadian market, shows Canada as a global outlier when it comes to the revenues generated by wireless carriers. The report notes the unsurprising correlation between high prices and low data usage:

There is a prerequisite for continued data usage growth, though: The total revenue per gigabyte can’t be too high – like in Canada and Belgium. The total revenue per gigabyte here is roughly 70 times higher than in India and 23 times higher than in Finland. And consequently, mobile usage is lower than average.

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January 22, 2019 18 comments News
Lots to say by Nick Kenrick (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/bk6gr6

Celebrating High Wireless Prices: Telus-Backed Report Claims Comparing Consumer Costs for Wireless Services is “Meaningless”

Several years ago, Telus had a message for consumers discouraged by repeated studies that found Canadians pay some of the highest wireless rates in the world. In a blog post responding to an OECD study, company executive Ted Woodhead argued “Canada really should be the most expensive country for wireless service in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), but we’re not. That’s a great success story we should be celebrating.” Celebrating anything less than the world’s highest wireless prices recently came to mind as Telus  tried to sow doubt in a Canadian government commissioned study that highlighted yet again the uncompetitive realities of the Canadian wireless market. The company commissioned its own report that implausibly concludes that “communications services in Canada are cheaper than the prices foreign providers would charge for the same plans.”

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January 9, 2019 6 comments News