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Canadian Telecoms Make The Most Money on Data Usage In The World: Tefficient (huffingtonpost.ca)

Posted by msmash on from the making-money dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Canadian wireless users have some of the lowest data usage in the world, but Canadian telecom companies make the most money off the customers they have, a new report shows. A study by telecom comparison site Tefficient looked at data usage per SIM card in 36 countries worldwide in 2017, and how much money telecoms made per gigabyte of wireless data used. Canadians used about 1.3 GB of data per month per SIM card last year. There were only five countries where wireless customers used less than that -- the Czech Republic, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, and Greece. By contrast, Indian telecoms had the lowest revenue per gigabyte, and showed the highest growth in data usage in 2017 -- more than 300 percent.

31 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Not news for Canadian by ccool · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As A Canadian myself, this is not news. The price for cell phones are about the highest in the world and the big 4 are making sure there is little competition...

    1. Re: Not news for Canadian by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ya yell.me about it 100 /mo for unlimited minutes and 10 gigs of data, but then again 2nd largest country in the world with 35 Mill sparrsly populated kinda makes sense

    2. Re:Not news for Canadian by Godai · · Score: 1

      I was going to post the same thing. I doubt any Canadian who has a cell phone will be surprised by this news. I might be a little surprised that there isn't some other country whose telecoms are squeezing their customers harder, but I think most of us would have assumed we were top five at least before this study came out.

      --
      Wood Shavings!
      - Godai
    3. Re:Not news for Canadian by Solandri · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I feel for you guys up there. I worked in Canada for a couple years. When I went shopping for a Canadian cell phone, it turned out to actually be cheaper for me to add Canada roaming to my U.S. plan for $10/mo (calls while in Canada would be billed as if they were made in the U.S.), than it was for me to replace my U.S. plan with a Canadian plan. And I know from traveling to other parts of the world that U.S. cell phone plans are already quite expensive.

    4. Re:Not news for Canadian by Straif · · Score: 1

      The rate plans in Canada are all about timing and location. If you renew around Christmas you can generally get a much better plan.

      I got unlimited talk and text nationwide + 10gb of data for $60 (taxes in) last Christmas and then a week later that same plan was a about $115 + tax.

      You can get similar $60 plans all the time but the trade off is you have to live in Manitoba. I guess they figure you're suffering enough so they'll give you a little break on your phone bill.

      --
      Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
    5. Re:Not news for Canadian by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      It's not the phone companies that keep out any competition; it's the government. The Telecommunications Act keeps out foreign investment and guarantees that Canadians pay twice as much as they should for telecom service. It's the same with all government-protected industries: air travel, banking, dairy.

  2. Not a surprise by baerd · · Score: 1

    As a Canadian who traveled to Australia I was amazed and the amount of data and how cheap it was month to month down there. In Canada you get basically the same ripoff from all the major providers. There are cheaper choices (your Fidos etc) but for some reason a lot of people choose not to use them. It's even worse with internet providers, there is no choice for most people in the west.

    --
    I wish I had a lawn.
    1. Re:Not a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      SpaceX requires a phased array antenna about the size and shape of a pizza box. Maybe fine if you own a home.

      But no good for:

      Apartment dwellers

      Condo owners

      People with homes with shitty HOAs

      Mobile service

    2. Re:Not a surprise by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      In Canada you get basically the same ripoff from all the major providers. There are cheaper choices (your Fidos etc) but for some reason a lot of people choose not to use them. It's even worse with internet providers, there is no choice for most people in the west.

      For starters, there's no "unlimited" plans in Canada. And this includes those BS ones that slow you down after a gig - none of it exists in Canada. You pay for X gigs, that's all you get. Granted, they don't throttle video either, but that I think is a side effect of the net neutrality laws.

      And for ISPs, out west it isn't that bad. It's Eastern Canada that's pretty bad where you have the awful Bell network (we're too big to care) or Rogers. At least out in Western Canada, the DSL and Cable incumbents are generally good (Telus and Shaw, respectively). And by good, I mean little blocking, decent speeds (150Mbps or more, and Telus is rolling down symmetrical 150Mbps over FTTH), with little to no data caps (or data caps too large to generally matter).

      But out East, bleech. Bell sucks - they are consistently the worst company by sheer number of complaints (you know you're bad when your #1 by double or triple the number of complaints by #2, which is Rogers which is only a little more than #3, Telus).

    3. Re:Not a surprise by ChoGGi · · Score: 1

      For starters, there's no "unlimited" plans in Canada.

      https://www.lightspeed.ca/

    4. Re:Not a surprise by Anaerin · · Score: 1

      I think he meant "No Unlimited CELLPHONE plans in Canada", as that's what this whole thing was about.

    5. Re:Not a surprise by SirCowMan · · Score: 1

      The cheaper mobile choices, such as Fido/Kodoo, were bought out by the big guys, i.e. Rogers/Telus in this example, and are not much better. We had a bit of a chance with Wind, which did offer unlimited data (throttled after 5gb/mo.) within some cities but now that's shaw so who knows.

      Out east, for ISP's, Eastlink appearantly hasn't had any issues for my relatives, and Aliant (now owned by Bell) was pretty good. Aliant was regularly giving speed upgrades and recently made all the fiber plans symmetrical, I'm on symmetrical gigabit in Nfld now and get ~700/700 off-island. Aliant, however, has been going downhill since they rebranded under the Bell banner, and perhaps uncoincidentally the prices have started to rise. Aliant has no data caps/unlimited usage.

      I've, at various times, been a customer of Bell, Shaw, Telus, and Rogers in various parts of the country, there are no places any of them are 'good', they are all ridiculously terrible across the board. Rogers with the DNS poisoning. Shaw with below-rated performance. Bell, at the height of their deep packet inspection, throttling all sorts of traffic.

      Telecoms in this country should be technological leaders, the great distances of Canada should be a driver of innovation (such as it was when we were deploying microwave links for land-lines), but instead we have this crowd of jerks.

      --
      !Equality through palindromes semordnilap hguorht ytilauqE!
  3. Does this include wireless internet? by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

    I've got plenty of Canadian buddies who're just outside of a major city and their only internet option is extremely slow and expensive wireless.

    1. Re:Does this include wireless internet? by dryeo · · Score: 1

      I'm just far enough east of Vancouver that I didn't have any cell and just dial up ($45 a month + $30 for the land line). Telus finally put up a tower and has this rural internet deal. LTE, about 12 Mb/s down (8-25 depending on time of day) and 1-2 Mb/s up (slower the down, better the up) with a 250 GB limit, including payments on the $300 internet hub (it's half that for regular plans), it's close to a $100 a month. Nice after dial-up but if I was a couple of miles closer to town, it would be 300/300 unlimited fibre for the same price (with a 6 month discount).
      Some of my neighbours had xplornet and hated it, but love the LTE, I never had the option due to a mountain.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  4. Germany by Calydor · · Score: 1

    The most common data plans in Germany give you between 500 MB and 1 GB data per month, so it's not a surprise their monthly average is below 1.3 GB per month. Throttling sets in HARD if you hit your cap, limiting you to 64 kbps if you don't get cut off completely.

    You try using the internet of today at 64 kbps.

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    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    1. Re:Germany by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Thats pretty funny because T-Mobile is unlimited everything in the US.

    2. Re:Germany by Calydor · · Score: 1

      The issue, as far as I can tell, is that Germany never really invested in cell infrastructure and it's coming back to bite them HARD.

      They didn't really invest much in landline infrastructure outside the cities either, so I'm stuck choosing between a pricy 8 GB/month cap on wireless or a 448/96 kbps (yes, kbps) ADSL connection. That's all I can get here.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    3. Re:Germany by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Americans have been told how great broadband is everywhere else. Guess not so much.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    4. Re:Germany by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Better then getting charged something like 50 cents a MB if you go over, with no warning. I'd rather get cut back to 64 kbs, especially since up till last year, I was stuck with 26.4 kbs on dial up.
      Now for home internet, I have a rural LTE plan with a 250 GB limit and generally about 12 Mb/s down.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    5. Re:Germany by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Here is how that works, the more like the US a western country is the crappier it's broadband is for exactly the same reasons. Specifically a corrupt establishment trying to keep broadband down and expensive because, at election time it makes it possible for all candidates to have equal access to the electorate and not the anti-corporate control candidates to be effectively censored by corporate main stream media. Also profit, simply cartel activity and bribes paid in tax haven to allow inflated rates to be charged with no investigation, you get why silencing political opposition is so important. So yeah Canada and Australian broadband also shite, an Australian government tried to change it but the establishment got in the and purposefully destroyed the NBN. Hey they made an appointment to come check the equipment mounted to my home, get this July 12 to December 18, you think Canada is bad, try that for inspiring confidence (the repurposed cable TV crap is so bad, they have no idea how long it will take to fix but they fed billions to their buddies who would make sure they go elected).

      The closer your ties with the US government, the more corrupt your country becomes.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. ...even for those who don't have them by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    I was going to post the same thing. I doubt any Canadian who has a cell phone will be surprised by this news.

    Even those of us who do not have cell phones are not surprised by this news since the insane expense of cell phones in Canada is why I don't have one.

    1. Re:...even for those who don't have them by ahodgson · · Score: 1

      You can buy a $100 Android phone off Amazon and use it on a $15-$40/month prepay (depending how much you actually use it as a phone). You don't have to pay the premier robber-baron prices. You will still have to pay extra for data, though.

    2. Re:...even for those who don't have them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You don't understand. Even a limited $15 plan text or voice only plan, or a entry-level $50 text/voice/data plan is severely gouging you. In Poland, you can get a monthly sim (no contract) from Orange for 25-30 PLN (about $9 CAD), which gives you unlimited minutes, unlimited texts, and 15GB of data.

      Koodo, as an Canadian example, only gives you 10GB for the low, low price of $90 (must be a sale, it was $110 last time I checked). You can add an international roam-like-home for just $10/day... but you'd be insane to do it. On the entry-level end, the $50 plan is 500 minutes and 2GB of data. That's also crap.

      10GB for $90 - scaled to 15GB = $135, or a 15x gouging factor (135/9)
      2GB for $50 - scaled to 15GB = $375, or a 41x gouging factor (375/9), and that's ignoring the value of the minutes.

    3. Re:...even for those who don't have them by ahodgson · · Score: 1

      Oh, I understand I'm still getting screwed. I can't do anything about that, though. I'm just saying you don't have to pay Telus or Bell $100 a month or more for terrible service.

    4. Re:...even for those who don't have them by ahodgson · · Score: 1

      Buy a prepaid SIM from Koodo. Set it up on their web site using their self-serve portal. Plug it into any unlocked phone. Tada, you get Telus service for a fraction of the price.

      You're still getting gouged by the oligopoly, but it's a gentler gouging.

    5. Re: ...even for those who don't have them by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      What I don't understand is why you would even WANT 15 gigs of data. My current plan is for 3 gigs per month and I don't think I've ever exceeded 2. Most months I barely go over 1.

      I get that there may be areas out in the boondocks where you can't get cable or ADSL for home use, so a cheap 4g data plan would be a huge benefit ... but I have no clue how so many people with good connection at home and living in cities littered with free WiFi still manage to blow through dozens of gigabytes in a month.

  6. "...it may be because the rates are higher..." by ole_timer · · Score: 1

    doh!

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    nothing to see here - move along
  7. Adam Smith is still laughing by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Really ? charge more for something people buy less. You don't say.

  8. Misleading summary by misnohmer · · Score: 2

    The headline summary conveniently omits "per GB". The source actual article also used the headline "makes money", which implies profit, instead of "charges money" which is simply a price. The actual headline should be: "Canadian Telecoms CHARGE The Most Money PER GB on Data Usage In The World: Tefficient" The more they charge, the less people will use. The source already mentions that Canadians use very little.data, probably due to cost. There is no mention of how much money they actually make (they could charge $1000 per GB, doesn't mean they'd be making more money).

    1. Re:Misleading summary by dryeo · · Score: 2

      My ISP, Telus, is very profitable with mostly increasing profits every year.
      According to https://www.cbc.ca/news/techno... all the Canadian Telecoms are the most profitable in the world at 45.9%. That article is old but ddg returns other results showing their profitability, eg https://ycharts.com/companies/... shows 12.24% quarterly.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  9. Re: 640 Meg should be enough for anyone... by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    It's kilobytes, kid.