How much bang do you get for your wireless buck?
Posted July 18, 2013 7:41 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – How much bang are you getting for your wireless buck?
An international report suggests while we pay a lot, we don’t seem to get much in return.
In its 2013 Communications Outlook, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks us 32nd out of the 34 industrialized countries studied when it comes to data-only plans and dead-last in wireless subscriptions per capita.
Critics say the report shows Canada is falling further behind the rest of the world.
“We have business people, innovators, entrepreneurs telling us what a dead weight these high cell phone prices are on Canada’s economy,” explains David Christopher with Openmedia.ca.
“If you’re running a small business, your cell phone bills each month are a big chunk out of your budget.”
He adds you can blame those high prices on a distinct lack of competition in Canadian wireless sector. “Our wireless market is 94 per cent dominated by just three large conglomerates: Bell, Rogers, and Telus. They dominate the market.”
“Many Canadians have no alternative to the high cost big three,” adds Christopher.
But Shawn Hall with Telus maintains our sector in among the most competitive around.
“Having three national carriers, dozens of regional and smaller carriers, makes us one of the most competitive industries anywhere in the world,” he argues.
The report also finds the big three Canadian carriers have the third-highest revenue-per-user in the G8 and the fourth-highest across the whole OECD. But Hall says the providers put as much in as they take out.
“We’ve got a vast and a very challenging geography, a sparse population, we invest almost twice as much as they do in other countries and yet our pricing compares well.”
Hall adds Canada is the only country in the world with three national LTE networks, the current gold standard for high speed wireless communication.
Rogers is the parent company of News1130.
