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Canada Opens Wireless Industry To Competition
FreeKill writes "The Canadian government on Wednesday paved the way for new cellphone companies by announcing new rules for an auction of radio airwaves designed to spur competition in the wireless industry. About 40 per cent of the spectrum will be reserved for new entrants with the remainder open to all bidders, including Canada's big three providers — Rogers, Bell, and Telus. The government will also mandate roaming area agreements which will force existing carriers to share their networks with newcomers for five years, plus another five if the new entrants can build up their own networks nationally."
Canada didn't use to have 3 national wireless carriers. It was only a few years ago, that Rogers bought out Fido. A few years prior, Clearnet was purchased by Telus. The consolidation was great for the wireless providers...
Fido* was the price leader. They started billing by the second, unlimited voice plans, etc. Except they didn't make much money (actually they went bankrupt once). When Fido got purchased by Rogers, the competitive pricing pressure was taken off of everyone. Rogers got the best of it, since they became the only choice for those who need GSM (and those international users who end up roaming on Rogers). So prices have stalled, and in many cases edged up.
Naturally, we scream for more competition. I'm sure some company will win the frequencies, but I wouldn't bet on them succeeding.
Networks are bloody expensive to build. And, since Canada's land mass is larger than the US, with only 30M potential customers, it's more expensive to build on a per-capita basis. Granted, you don't need to provide service to the bulk of the unpopulated land, but still, a town in Canada is a whole lot smaller than a town in the USA.
Even today, Telus and Bell share their "home" networks with each other in the West and East respectively to provide national coverage while they complete their build-outs.
So, yay for more competition. Whoever it ends up being, I wish them well, and luck... they'll need it.
* Fido is operated as a distinct brand on the Rogers network, but a lot has changed - lots of nickel and dimeing.
Dang, your plan sounds fantastic! Too bad Rogers wasn't an option for me: $6 bucks for caller ID as well, $6 for voice mail, $0.25 per SMS, $0.20 per MMS + outrageous data transfer fees, $7 or something monthly "system access fee," $1 monthly 911 access fee... and it goes on and on
"I loved how they had the response of at least three different perspectives (a current telecom exec from Bell, the Allstream exec looking to go in the market, and a liberal critic) in the article without slanting the information towards a particular point of view."
I hadn't checked to see who wrote the article, but when I read that I knew it was CBC. You should check out the online stream of the radio broadcast - great stuff!