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Discussion of Apple topics here on HN almost always gets reduced to the argument that Apple is not a monopoly, so what they are doing is OK. I want to present a

Discussion of Apple topics here on HN almost always gets reduced to the argument that Apple is not a monopoly, so what they are doing is OK. I want to present an alternative viewpoint. It's not a monopoly issue, it is an anti-competitive issue. In Canada, we have three major cell carriers. None of them has a monopoly, or anything close to it. None of them has even 50% market share. You can have a 10 GB smartphone plan with Rogers for $75. If you don't like that, you can switch to Bell's 10 GB plan for $75. If you don't like Bell, of course you can switch to Telus's 10 GB plan for, wait for it, $75. The Big 3 operate smaller brands with fewer bells and whistles and lower costs. You can get a 4 GB cell plan from Koodo (Telus subsidiary) for $50, or from Fido (Rogers subsidiary) for $50, or from Virgin Mobile (Bell subsidiary) for $50. Sometimes one of them has promotional pricing, like $45 instead of $50 for 4GB. The other two offer the same pricing for the same duration. Sometimes one of them increases their prices by $5 a month citing reasons such as infrastructure investments, lower Canadian dollar value, or inflation. The other two increase their prices by the same amount a couple of days later. And none of this is collusion in the legal sense. They don't gather in smoke-filled rooms and decide how to screw over their customers. There is not back-channel communication whatsoever. And it is not because the competition is so perfect the prices have been commoditized. In fact, Canada has some of the highest cell plan prices in the world, even adjusting for factors such as population density and GDP. It's just that the big companies have decided to stop competing. If you live in, say Alberta or Ontario or BC, you have three options and they are all the same overpriced crap. Cell carriers in Canada are not a monopoly, but you don't have to be a monopoly to harm customers with anti-competitive behaviour. Apple and Google, Android and iOS do not have a monopoly or a collusion agreement. But they are harming the customers all the same.

chodeboy 6y ago
I think the word you are looking for is oligopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly
grandinj 6y ago
Yup. We have similar behaviour with cell phone companies here in South Africa. The big two have reached a stable state, are happy with their market share, and know that as long as they don't directly talk to each other when raising prices, they are legally in the clear.
musicale 6y ago
I think this is called tacit collusion. You see something like this with gasoline pricing - major brands will have "competing" stations across the street from each other, but their prices moves in lock step without a race to the bottom. Memory vendors have explicitly colluded in the past, but they really didn't need to - they just needed to copy their competitors' posted pricing. Presumably that is what they do now. If there are high barriers to new competitors entering the market, then the situation is unlikely to change.
- umvi 6y ago
  > You tend to see it with gasoline pricing as well - all the major companies have nearly identical prices. Yeah because otherwise you make no money on gas. If I undercut the store across the street by a penny, they will then immediately match me or undercut by a penny. Pretty soon, we are at the break-even point and can't go lower without losing money. That's not tacit collusion, that's just a race to the bottom. There's a big difference between all major app stores taking 30% every time money changes hands, and a race-to-the-bottom industry like milk or gasoline. Try starting a dairy farm - I think you'll find you won't be able to price your milk lower than your competition, and as a result your milk will be the same price everyone else's has been for the past 50 years - ~$2-3/gallon.
- dudus 6y ago
  I believe the correct term is Cartel and is just as illegal as monopoly just harder to prove.
  - g_p 6y ago
    A cartel, by my understanding, would require the act of collusion to take place. The issue in the telecoms market, at least IMO, is the high entry price (spectrum access sometimes meaning there is no option aside from buying an existing operator), combined with scale of the operators (usually large and national-level) meaning there is little entrepreneurial spirit to drive costs down. It can cost a large company 100x what it would cost a small company to do the same work, and that becomes a price everyone ends up paying for. But absent knocking down barriers to entry, it's a very hard market for a new entrant to get into, unless you are happy to just sell to the existing incumbents as clients.
CPLX 6y ago
> It's not a monopoly issue, it is an anti-competitive issue. Indeed. It is a common misconception that antitrust only applies to monopolies. You can engage in anti-competitive behavior of various kinds, illegally, without actually having a monopoly in strict terms.
beached_whale 6y ago
For locations in Canada with a local cell provider or internet provider, the pricing is much better. Either lower prices, more services for price point, or a combination of both. I suspect this is/was part of the push to get non-incumbents into the cell market.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Even then, it's just a matter of time before they get assimilated into the Borg. Manitoba used to have MTS, until it was bought by Bell. I would not be surprised if in 20 years Vidéotron and SaksTel would be long gone too.
  - beached_whale 6y ago
    That's actually interesting too, the prices went up I think after they sold. Good evidence for people opposed to further actions like that
redthrow 6y ago
In Canada, Fido has $10/m + tax "Tablet Plan" which can be used on phones and gives you 4GB/m data. You may need to find someone who already has a Fido plan. I use the 2ndLine app for (very rare) calls and SMS. It gives you a local number. Data-only is the most cost effective imo
shadowgovt 6y ago
That sounds like the kind of thing that doesn't begin to change until and unless someone either starts putting up their own towers or VoIP becomes ubiquitous enough to be a real threat to the cell business model.
- ss3000 6y ago
  This has been attempted before. Wind Mobile (now Freedom Mobile) was an upstart carrier that attempted to compete. They ended up just getting acquired though. Their Wikipedia article paints a pretty bleak and accurate picture of the "competitive" landscape: > Freedom Mobile Inc. is a Canadian wireless telecommunications provider owned by Shaw Communications. With 1,767,155 active subscribers (as of the end of February 29, 2020) in urban areas of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, it is Canada's fourth largest mobile network operator with 5% market share.[3] > Founded in 2008 as Wind Mobile by the telecommunications company Globalive, Freedom was one of several new mobile carriers launched in Canada in 2008 after a government initiative to encourage competition in the wireless sector alongside Mobilicity (later acquired by Rogers Communications) and Public Mobile (later acquired by Telus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Mobile
- touisteur 6y ago
  Free did this in France for mobile. It really drastically squashed prices for some time. Then everyone went down to match Free's prices somehow and we're now at a new equilibrium...
luisfmh 6y ago
Not to contradict your point, because I agree fully, but given how concisely you put it, I'd be interested in what your thoughts are on Freedom Mobile? I know they're kind of independent, but also their coverage sucks.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  They have serious coverage issues, even in Calgary, where they are headquartered. By the time their coverage converges that of the big players, I expect so do their prices. Right now, they are not a realistic option for most people because of the coverage issue.
- mabbo 6y ago
  I used them for years and quite liked them. Inside a city, you can usually get good coverage. Outside of the cities, you paid a little extra. But this was back when the best they offered was 3G, and their signal quality wasn't great. After a few incidents where I was downtown in Toronto, full bars of signal, yet couldn't open a single webpage or use my data, I decided it was time to ditch them. I loath the big-3, but I needed reliable service. I've heard that after they installed their LTE/4G towers, most of those problems went away. Maybe I'll go back, eventually, but for now I'll be gouged like most Canadians.
artembugara 6y ago
As far as I remember it is a perfect Nash-Pareto equilibrium strategy: "keep the same price as the other side until the other side changes it". And, if all sides follow this strategy then prices are always $50
cm277 6y ago
I think I have a better analogy: Apple operates a market with a significant portion of economic activity in several industries / verticals, yet it sets its own rules and even is party to transactions. That's basically the definition of a black market. Black markets are useful in some circumstances, but when they grow too big they have to be regulated and taxed. A lot. Good for Epic.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Except for it to be a black market illegality needs to be established and it isn't clandestine - the rules are freely available and there are other markets (android) available for apps. This is a poor analogy. I am still waiting for a real argument on HN as to what Apple is doing that is anti-competitive or illegal. Still have not found one.
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    Apple and Google are both charging 30% fees and together, they own almost the entire smartphone market. It is harming consumers due to the higher costs this 30% is imposing on transactions. Whether it is illegal or not is up to the court to decide. But as a customer, I would like to complain about this and state my dissatisfaction. Perhaps if enough people do it, they will change their behaviour. Also as a voter, I would hope that the legislature make these costs come down. In Canada, the government recently intervened to reduce credit card processing fees. I would hope next they direct their attention to app store fees. https://globalnews.ca/news/4379884/canada-credit-card-fee-cuts/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4379884/canada-credit-card-fee-cu...
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Why? They provide a great service to consumers - a store to get applications easily. They provide a great service to devs - a store to get consumers to see and buy their products. Why is 30% unfair? A company charging a certain percentage for something is neither unfair or anti-competitive. You need to develop your argument further.
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
Thanks for the wall of text. Next time you can just post the word “oligopoly”.
jakub_g 6y ago
> 10 GB smartphone plan for $75 Wow. In France it's the reverse: during promotions, you can get 70GB for €10. Out of promo, it's €15-€20 at low cost operators, and €35 at traditional brands.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Yeah, I spent half a day walking around phone stores in Vancouver trying to find a couple of GB pay as you go sim (expecting it to cost $10-20). Turns out they don't exist in Canada.
  - abawany 6y ago
    It cost me $50 to get a 1GB plan in Montreal because they bundled it with a useless 'calling plan' that only worked in the province. There has to be a special place in Hades for the people in charge of Canadian telecoms and banks, I hope.
Veen 6y ago
I find those prices shocking. In the UK, I pay £10 for 6GB and unlimited calls and texts. For £20, I could have 80 GB of data on my current network.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  But that same complained about phenomenon applies in the UK. Regulators do put at least some effort into trying to disrupt it but it's definitely there. Example: A few years ago it was legal in the UK to advertise the price of broadband excluding the fee for "landline rental". This recurring fee notionally covers the service cost of the actual copper (in most cases) last mile cable needed to deliver service. In principle you could use it to make voice telephone calls (remember those?) and needn't buy it from the same provider as Internet service piggybacked on the same physical infrastructure. So e.g. Big ISP #1 advertises Internet is "£5 for first six months†" and then the small print explains "† Plus line rental of £11.50 per month". That's £16.50 customers will actually be paying, and a competitor Big ISP #2 won't get far advertising Internet as "£15 for first six months" because that sounds much more expensive even though it's less. So sure enough they'll do the same thing only more so "£3 for the first six months†" "† Plus line rental of £12 per month". Still, ISPs argued this is fair because they don't actually provide the service "line rental" pays for, they don't have teams of engineers in vans ready to dig up cable and repair it, that's something a last mile owner does. Except, since the last mile is a natural monopoly that provider is legally obliged to publish its pricing and rationale. Sure enough it does bill for "line rental". But is it charging £12 per month? £11.50 per month? Er, no, over the modern period its costs have reduced gradually and it's charging those ISPs about £8 per month. So that £12 "line rental" is actually £8 line rental plus £4 "Money we're hiding from our real prices so as to trick customers". Even if they never met in a darkened room and agreed to fix these bogus prices, the effect was that all large UK ISPs inflated a fee so as to make their prices look cheaper, taking advantage of customers. Maybe no crime was committed, except in the sense that customers got ripped off. This particular loophole was closed by requiring ISPs to advertise the price that includes all fees needed to deliver the actual service, and sure enough once they couldn't use it to hide the real price the ISPs stopped pretending "line rental" cost 50% more than it really did.
- g_p 6y ago
dathinab 6y ago
> reduced to the argument that Apple is not a monopoly, so what they are doing is OK. Wait, how can what Apple does ever be okay even they legally don't have a monopoly. Apple provides a marketplace (which they name store, but it's a marked place not a store) which is the only way to install software (on their phone) for millions of persons which means it's a marked and not just a marked place and they do both run the marked and provide products there but give their products an unfair competitive advantage (access to internal APIs, fast review, not applying app guidlines, subvention developent for the apps etc.) while haven basically rip-of pricing for (at least part of) the competition and intentionally preventing many business model and undermining how companies can freely present their products and company to users inside of their own products... Not sure how anyone can call it ok, tbh. Maybe legal due to a laws not yet having arrived in the 21st century but definitively not ok.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zepto 6y ago
  The usual answer is that people who buy the phones must think it’s ok, otherwise they’d buy a competitor’s phone. And of course opinions differ on the good and bad aspects of their policies. It’s not like all the competitors who are complaining are ‘fair’ in any particular way. Also, your description fits a department store, or Amazon, or pretty much any other store for that matter. All store owners get to stock what they want, charge what they want, and give their own products advantages. If your argument is that no store should be able to do these things, then that seems like a reasonable position to hold. Perhaps we do need to overhaul the notion of marketplaces and intermediaries in general. That seems like a relevant idea to explore. The people arguing about monopolies are saying that everyone else should be allowed to do these things, but not Apple because they have too much power.
  - andybak 6y ago
    > The usual answer is that people who buy the phones must think it’s ok, otherwise they’d buy a competitor’s phone. I think plenty of people might think on reflection "That's not cool but I still want that phone". That pretty much sums up my continuing commercial relationship with Google as well. And my feelings about most modern meat production practices. We don't always vote with our wallets.
kazinator 6y ago
> They don't gather in smoke-filled rooms and decide how to screw over their customers. While that makes for nice rhetoric in your great comment, you don't actually know that this doesn't happen.
- juiyout 6y ago
  You don’t know that OP doesn’t actually know that doesn’t happen.
  - declnz 6y ago
    But you do know that they don't know that the OP doesn't know that doesn't happen?...
parasubvert 6y ago
A market equilibrium is reached and it’s called anti-competitive behaviour. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I suppose the state could implement price controls and force Rogers et al to lower their prices. That worked well in the past!
- mmastrac 6y ago
  Market equilibrium !== collusion and it's difficult to tell them apart.
  - parasubvert 6y ago
    Canadian telecoms are not colluding.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  What has worked in other countries, namely Australia, is MVNOs. The government is considering mandating telecom companies to give MVNOs access to their network, like they mandate cable and internet companies, but it is unlikely such a decision would be made anytime soon. Australia is truly a success story. I wouldn't mind if Canada's telecom landscape becomes more similar to Australia's.
smabie 6y ago
It's likely that the investors in each company are mostly the same institutions, namely index funds and ETFs issuers. When you have investors that own everything, they don't want the companies to compete.
lancepioch 6y ago
You gave an example of price fixing, not anti competitive behavior. They don't have to meet up in a secret room either for it to count. If they are constantly adjusting their prices to all be exactly the same, that is illegal in the U.S. as price fixing.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Price-fixing is an falls under the umbrella of anti-competitive behaviour. For example, at least in Canada, Competition Bureau is in charge of avoiding price-fixing. On FTC website, price-fixing page is filed under Competition Guidance. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
- skdd8 6y ago
  Exactly! The example just describes a cartel of companies that have an understanding of non-competition. If it was a truly competitive the prices, features and offers would always be better to attract customers all the time. While 30% is steep I don’t think Apple is at fault here. You wanna be able to use their carefully constructed walled garden with security protections, servers, payment system and users? You have to pay to play.
kirillzubovsky 6y ago
I worked for one of the Canadian carriers, and they are only not a monopoly as far as the paper definition is concerned, but in practice they do in fact gather in smoke-filled rooms and decide to screw their customers (your words, not mine). They are also very good at pretending they don't. Apple on the other hand has created an infrastructure to enable a billion interconnected devices, and they are now charging a fee to operate. They are not colluding or preventing competition, they are simply saying there's a price to play, and it's 30%. It's natural that Fortnite doesn't want to share their profits, in the same way that Apple doesn't want to be the only ones taking the loses, but every time this question comes up, lots of comments assume Apple should bend over simply because it's bigger and wealthier.
Bayart 6y ago
It's a regulation issue. Things were similar in my country until the state decided to sell the fourth frequency range licence at a reduced cost (to offset the lead of the other three) and made routing cheaper. In exchange the new provider had to commit infrastructure investments. At about the same time, it was legally mandated that transferring phone numbers between providers be simple and cheap. The prices cratered pretty much instantly. I think I'm on a 15€/100GB plan at the moment (plus a bunch a stuff like 25GB a month of international roaming).
- xrendan 6y ago
  There is a fourth carrier with Freedom Mobile but the population density makes it so hard for them to truly compete.
  - Bayart 6y ago
    It's an argument that comes back often when talking about telco and it does make sense on the surface, but as far as I'm aware most the Canadian population lives in a pretty narrow range of the country's territory. There needs to be some compensation going into the dense areas paying for the infrastructure of the near-empty ones to a degree, but I have a hard time believing it justifies that level of pricing. Just look at the prices in Australia or Russia. There's no good technical reason Canada should just be massively more expensive than the rest.
miah_ 6y ago
The word you are looking for is: oligopoly.
jairofloress 6y ago
The sadder part of this is when one of those not-colluded companies decide to increase a big number their service, the others wait to see is people accept this and then they do it as well. There is where we hurt ourselves.
Smoosh 6y ago
The same thing happens here in Australia with banks (4 major companies) and petrol stations (2 major companies).
DrJaws 6y ago
That's called an oligopoly and falls under the same rules as monopolies
avasthe 6y ago
HN is quite invested in Apple that's why you would see a lot of people defending them here. Same for webdev
norswap 6y ago
In so many words, you've just described an oligarchy!
908B64B197 6y ago
From working with Canadians, it always supprised me how they seemed fine with these non-competitive practices for Telecom and Banking. It seems that they are systematically over-paying for what they are getting. Maybe it's a form of pride to have the "Canadian alternative"? Or they feel they couldn't really compete with the US/Europeans?
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  I wonder to what extent it's actually true though, to what extent are higher prices not simply driven by higher costs, rather than some kind of tacit collusion to drive excess profit? Population density in Canada is about 4 per square km, in the US about 36, and in the UK (pretty typical for western-europe) about 270. I know that much of Canada is mostly uninhabited and typical population density is a lot higher, still, to hook up Canadian telecom infrastructure seems to be inherently to be a much more expensive endeavour. I compared quickly (not very thorough) the profit margins and some ratios of US/Canadian telecoms, and they're really not much different.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    What's interesting is to look at the population distribution and not simply density. [0] It's an extreme outlier in terms of habitable land vs land area. 5% of it's land is arable, as compared to close to 17% for the United-States. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the land was simply not inhabited. [0] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada/ https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada...
    - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
      Sure I already mentioned this caveat regarding that population density figures, but the caveat is nowhere sufficient to defeat the point. Sources will state about 80% of Canada is uninhabited, and 47% of the US. In the UK it' 1-2%. In other words, even assuming you apply the population density figures I mentioned in my previous post to only 20% of Canada or ±50% of the US, you'd still get a large discrepancy in 20 people per square km in Canada, vs 72 in the US, and still around 270 in the UK. Hooking up the same coverage with 3-4 (US) or 13-14 (UK) times fewer people in that area should naturally drive much higher costs per person connected, which may explain prices. And given profit margins of all the big telcos aren't exceptionally high for Canada despite much higher prices, that hypothesis seems quite plausible.

chodeboy 6y ago

I think the word you are looking for is oligopoly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

grandinj 6y ago

Yup. We have similar behaviour with cell phone companies here in South Africa. The big two have reached a stable state, are happy with their market share, and know that as long as they don't directly talk to each other when raising prices, they are legally in the clear.

musicale 6y ago

I think this is called tacit collusion. You see something like this with gasoline pricing - major brands will have "competing" stations across the street from each other, but their prices moves in lock step without a race to the bottom. Memory vendors have explicitly colluded in the past, but they really didn't need to - they just needed to copy their competitors' posted pricing. Presumably that is what they do now. If there are high barriers to new competitors entering the market, then the situation is unlikely to change.

umvi 6y ago
> You tend to see it with gasoline pricing as well - all the major companies have nearly identical prices. Yeah because otherwise you make no money on gas. If I undercut the store across the street by a penny, they will then immediately match me or undercut by a penny. Pretty soon, we are at the break-even point and can't go lower without losing money. That's not tacit collusion, that's just a race to the bottom. There's a big difference between all major app stores taking 30% every time money changes hands, and a race-to-the-bottom industry like milk or gasoline. Try starting a dairy farm - I think you'll find you won't be able to price your milk lower than your competition, and as a result your milk will be the same price everyone else's has been for the past 50 years - ~$2-3/gallon.
dudus 6y ago
I believe the correct term is Cartel and is just as illegal as monopoly just harder to prove.
- g_p 6y ago
  A cartel, by my understanding, would require the act of collusion to take place. The issue in the telecoms market, at least IMO, is the high entry price (spectrum access sometimes meaning there is no option aside from buying an existing operator), combined with scale of the operators (usually large and national-level) meaning there is little entrepreneurial spirit to drive costs down. It can cost a large company 100x what it would cost a small company to do the same work, and that becomes a price everyone ends up paying for. But absent knocking down barriers to entry, it's a very hard market for a new entrant to get into, unless you are happy to just sell to the existing incumbents as clients.

CPLX 6y ago

> It's not a monopoly issue, it is an anti-competitive issue. Indeed. It is a common misconception that antitrust only applies to monopolies. You can engage in anti-competitive behavior of various kinds, illegally, without actually having a monopoly in strict terms.

beached_whale 6y ago

For locations in Canada with a local cell provider or internet provider, the pricing is much better. Either lower prices, more services for price point, or a combination of both. I suspect this is/was part of the push to get non-incumbents into the cell market.

smnrchrds 6y ago
Even then, it's just a matter of time before they get assimilated into the Borg. Manitoba used to have MTS, until it was bought by Bell. I would not be surprised if in 20 years Vidéotron and SaksTel would be long gone too.
- beached_whale 6y ago
  That's actually interesting too, the prices went up I think after they sold. Good evidence for people opposed to further actions like that

redthrow 6y ago

In Canada, Fido has $10/m + tax "Tablet Plan" which can be used on phones and gives you 4GB/m data. You may need to find someone who already has a Fido plan. I use the 2ndLine app for (very rare) calls and SMS. It gives you a local number. Data-only is the most cost effective imo

shadowgovt 6y ago

That sounds like the kind of thing that doesn't begin to change until and unless someone either starts putting up their own towers or VoIP becomes ubiquitous enough to be a real threat to the cell business model.

ss3000 6y ago
This has been attempted before. Wind Mobile (now Freedom Mobile) was an upstart carrier that attempted to compete. They ended up just getting acquired though. Their Wikipedia article paints a pretty bleak and accurate picture of the "competitive" landscape: > Freedom Mobile Inc. is a Canadian wireless telecommunications provider owned by Shaw Communications. With 1,767,155 active subscribers (as of the end of February 29, 2020) in urban areas of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta, it is Canada's fourth largest mobile network operator with 5% market share.[3] > Founded in 2008 as Wind Mobile by the telecommunications company Globalive, Freedom was one of several new mobile carriers launched in Canada in 2008 after a government initiative to encourage competition in the wireless sector alongside Mobilicity (later acquired by Rogers Communications) and Public Mobile (later acquired by Telus). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Mobile
touisteur 6y ago
Free did this in France for mobile. It really drastically squashed prices for some time. Then everyone went down to match Free's prices somehow and we're now at a new equilibrium...

luisfmh 6y ago

Not to contradict your point, because I agree fully, but given how concisely you put it, I'd be interested in what your thoughts are on Freedom Mobile? I know they're kind of independent, but also their coverage sucks.

smnrchrds 6y ago
They have serious coverage issues, even in Calgary, where they are headquartered. By the time their coverage converges that of the big players, I expect so do their prices. Right now, they are not a realistic option for most people because of the coverage issue.
mabbo 6y ago
I used them for years and quite liked them. Inside a city, you can usually get good coverage. Outside of the cities, you paid a little extra. But this was back when the best they offered was 3G, and their signal quality wasn't great. After a few incidents where I was downtown in Toronto, full bars of signal, yet couldn't open a single webpage or use my data, I decided it was time to ditch them. I loath the big-3, but I needed reliable service. I've heard that after they installed their LTE/4G towers, most of those problems went away. Maybe I'll go back, eventually, but for now I'll be gouged like most Canadians.

artembugara 6y ago

As far as I remember it is a perfect Nash-Pareto equilibrium strategy: "keep the same price as the other side until the other side changes it". And, if all sides follow this strategy then prices are always $50

cm277 6y ago

I think I have a better analogy: Apple operates a market with a significant portion of economic activity in several industries / verticals, yet it sets its own rules and even is party to transactions. That's basically the definition of a black market. Black markets are useful in some circumstances, but when they grow too big they have to be regulated and taxed. A lot. Good for Epic.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
Except for it to be a black market illegality needs to be established and it isn't clandestine - the rules are freely available and there are other markets (android) available for apps. This is a poor analogy. I am still waiting for a real argument on HN as to what Apple is doing that is anti-competitive or illegal. Still have not found one.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Apple and Google are both charging 30% fees and together, they own almost the entire smartphone market. It is harming consumers due to the higher costs this 30% is imposing on transactions. Whether it is illegal or not is up to the court to decide. But as a customer, I would like to complain about this and state my dissatisfaction. Perhaps if enough people do it, they will change their behaviour. Also as a voter, I would hope that the legislature make these costs come down. In Canada, the government recently intervened to reduce credit card processing fees. I would hope next they direct their attention to app store fees. https://globalnews.ca/news/4379884/canada-credit-card-fee-cuts/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4379884/canada-credit-card-fee-cu...
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Why? They provide a great service to consumers - a store to get applications easily. They provide a great service to devs - a store to get consumers to see and buy their products. Why is 30% unfair? A company charging a certain percentage for something is neither unfair or anti-competitive. You need to develop your argument further.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

Thanks for the wall of text. Next time you can just post the word “oligopoly”.

jakub_g 6y ago

> 10 GB smartphone plan for $75 Wow. In France it's the reverse: during promotions, you can get 70GB for €10. Out of promo, it's €15-€20 at low cost operators, and €35 at traditional brands.

VBprogrammer 6y ago
Yeah, I spent half a day walking around phone stores in Vancouver trying to find a couple of GB pay as you go sim (expecting it to cost $10-20). Turns out they don't exist in Canada.
- abawany 6y ago
  It cost me $50 to get a 1GB plan in Montreal because they bundled it with a useless 'calling plan' that only worked in the province. There has to be a special place in Hades for the people in charge of Canadian telecoms and banks, I hope.

Veen 6y ago

I find those prices shocking. In the UK, I pay £10 for 6GB and unlimited calls and texts. For £20, I could have 80 GB of data on my current network.

tialaramex 6y ago
But that same complained about phenomenon applies in the UK. Regulators do put at least some effort into trying to disrupt it but it's definitely there. Example: A few years ago it was legal in the UK to advertise the price of broadband excluding the fee for "landline rental". This recurring fee notionally covers the service cost of the actual copper (in most cases) last mile cable needed to deliver service. In principle you could use it to make voice telephone calls (remember those?) and needn't buy it from the same provider as Internet service piggybacked on the same physical infrastructure. So e.g. Big ISP #1 advertises Internet is "£5 for first six months†" and then the small print explains "† Plus line rental of £11.50 per month". That's £16.50 customers will actually be paying, and a competitor Big ISP #2 won't get far advertising Internet as "£15 for first six months" because that sounds much more expensive even though it's less. So sure enough they'll do the same thing only more so "£3 for the first six months†" "† Plus line rental of £12 per month". Still, ISPs argued this is fair because they don't actually provide the service "line rental" pays for, they don't have teams of engineers in vans ready to dig up cable and repair it, that's something a last mile owner does. Except, since the last mile is a natural monopoly that provider is legally obliged to publish its pricing and rationale. Sure enough it does bill for "line rental". But is it charging £12 per month? £11.50 per month? Er, no, over the modern period its costs have reduced gradually and it's charging those ISPs about £8 per month. So that £12 "line rental" is actually £8 line rental plus £4 "Money we're hiding from our real prices so as to trick customers". Even if they never met in a darkened room and agreed to fix these bogus prices, the effect was that all large UK ISPs inflated a fee so as to make their prices look cheaper, taking advantage of customers. Maybe no crime was committed, except in the sense that customers got ripped off. This particular loophole was closed by requiring ISPs to advertise the price that includes all fees needed to deliver the actual service, and sure enough once they couldn't use it to hide the real price the ISPs stopped pretending "line rental" cost 50% more than it really did.
g_p 6y ago

dathinab 6y ago

> reduced to the argument that Apple is not a monopoly, so what they are doing is OK. Wait, how can what Apple does ever be okay even they legally don't have a monopoly. Apple provides a marketplace (which they name store, but it's a marked place not a store) which is the only way to install software (on their phone) for millions of persons which means it's a marked and not just a marked place and they do both run the marked and provide products there but give their products an unfair competitive advantage (access to internal APIs, fast review, not applying app guidlines, subvention developent for the apps etc.) while haven basically rip-of pricing for (at least part of) the competition and intentionally preventing many business model and undermining how companies can freely present their products and company to users inside of their own products... Not sure how anyone can call it ok, tbh. Maybe legal due to a laws not yet having arrived in the 21st century but definitively not ok.

deleted 6y ago
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zepto 6y ago
The usual answer is that people who buy the phones must think it’s ok, otherwise they’d buy a competitor’s phone. And of course opinions differ on the good and bad aspects of their policies. It’s not like all the competitors who are complaining are ‘fair’ in any particular way. Also, your description fits a department store, or Amazon, or pretty much any other store for that matter. All store owners get to stock what they want, charge what they want, and give their own products advantages. If your argument is that no store should be able to do these things, then that seems like a reasonable position to hold. Perhaps we do need to overhaul the notion of marketplaces and intermediaries in general. That seems like a relevant idea to explore. The people arguing about monopolies are saying that everyone else should be allowed to do these things, but not Apple because they have too much power.
- andybak 6y ago
  > The usual answer is that people who buy the phones must think it’s ok, otherwise they’d buy a competitor’s phone. I think plenty of people might think on reflection "That's not cool but I still want that phone". That pretty much sums up my continuing commercial relationship with Google as well. And my feelings about most modern meat production practices. We don't always vote with our wallets.

kazinator 6y ago

> They don't gather in smoke-filled rooms and decide how to screw over their customers. While that makes for nice rhetoric in your great comment, you don't actually know that this doesn't happen.

juiyout 6y ago
You don’t know that OP doesn’t actually know that doesn’t happen.
- declnz 6y ago
  But you do know that they don't know that the OP doesn't know that doesn't happen?...

parasubvert 6y ago

A market equilibrium is reached and it’s called anti-competitive behaviour. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I suppose the state could implement price controls and force Rogers et al to lower their prices. That worked well in the past!

mmastrac 6y ago
Market equilibrium !== collusion and it's difficult to tell them apart.
- parasubvert 6y ago
  Canadian telecoms are not colluding.
smnrchrds 6y ago
What has worked in other countries, namely Australia, is MVNOs. The government is considering mandating telecom companies to give MVNOs access to their network, like they mandate cable and internet companies, but it is unlikely such a decision would be made anytime soon. Australia is truly a success story. I wouldn't mind if Canada's telecom landscape becomes more similar to Australia's.

smabie 6y ago

It's likely that the investors in each company are mostly the same institutions, namely index funds and ETFs issuers. When you have investors that own everything, they don't want the companies to compete.

lancepioch 6y ago

You gave an example of price fixing, not anti competitive behavior. They don't have to meet up in a secret room either for it to count. If they are constantly adjusting their prices to all be exactly the same, that is illegal in the U.S. as price fixing.

smnrchrds 6y ago
Price-fixing is an falls under the umbrella of anti-competitive behaviour. For example, at least in Canada, Competition Bureau is in charge of avoiding price-fixing. On FTC website, price-fixing page is filed under Competition Guidance. https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
skdd8 6y ago
Exactly! The example just describes a cartel of companies that have an understanding of non-competition. If it was a truly competitive the prices, features and offers would always be better to attract customers all the time. While 30% is steep I don’t think Apple is at fault here. You wanna be able to use their carefully constructed walled garden with security protections, servers, payment system and users? You have to pay to play.

kirillzubovsky 6y ago

I worked for one of the Canadian carriers, and they are only not a monopoly as far as the paper definition is concerned, but in practice they do in fact gather in smoke-filled rooms and decide to screw their customers (your words, not mine). They are also very good at pretending they don't. Apple on the other hand has created an infrastructure to enable a billion interconnected devices, and they are now charging a fee to operate. They are not colluding or preventing competition, they are simply saying there's a price to play, and it's 30%. It's natural that Fortnite doesn't want to share their profits, in the same way that Apple doesn't want to be the only ones taking the loses, but every time this question comes up, lots of comments assume Apple should bend over simply because it's bigger and wealthier.

Bayart 6y ago

It's a regulation issue. Things were similar in my country until the state decided to sell the fourth frequency range licence at a reduced cost (to offset the lead of the other three) and made routing cheaper. In exchange the new provider had to commit infrastructure investments. At about the same time, it was legally mandated that transferring phone numbers between providers be simple and cheap. The prices cratered pretty much instantly. I think I'm on a 15€/100GB plan at the moment (plus a bunch a stuff like 25GB a month of international roaming).

xrendan 6y ago
There is a fourth carrier with Freedom Mobile but the population density makes it so hard for them to truly compete.
- Bayart 6y ago
  It's an argument that comes back often when talking about telco and it does make sense on the surface, but as far as I'm aware most the Canadian population lives in a pretty narrow range of the country's territory. There needs to be some compensation going into the dense areas paying for the infrastructure of the near-empty ones to a degree, but I have a hard time believing it justifies that level of pricing. Just look at the prices in Australia or Russia. There's no good technical reason Canada should just be massively more expensive than the rest.

miah_ 6y ago

The word you are looking for is: oligopoly.

jairofloress 6y ago

The sadder part of this is when one of those not-colluded companies decide to increase a big number their service, the others wait to see is people accept this and then they do it as well. There is where we hurt ourselves.

Smoosh 6y ago

The same thing happens here in Australia with banks (4 major companies) and petrol stations (2 major companies).

DrJaws 6y ago

That's called an oligopoly and falls under the same rules as monopolies

avasthe 6y ago

HN is quite invested in Apple that's why you would see a lot of people defending them here. Same for webdev

norswap 6y ago

In so many words, you've just described an oligarchy!

908B64B197 6y ago

From working with Canadians, it always supprised me how they seemed fine with these non-competitive practices for Telecom and Banking. It seems that they are systematically over-paying for what they are getting. Maybe it's a form of pride to have the "Canadian alternative"? Or they feel they couldn't really compete with the US/Europeans?

IkmoIkmo 6y ago
I wonder to what extent it's actually true though, to what extent are higher prices not simply driven by higher costs, rather than some kind of tacit collusion to drive excess profit? Population density in Canada is about 4 per square km, in the US about 36, and in the UK (pretty typical for western-europe) about 270. I know that much of Canada is mostly uninhabited and typical population density is a lot higher, still, to hook up Canadian telecom infrastructure seems to be inherently to be a much more expensive endeavour. I compared quickly (not very thorough) the profit margins and some ratios of US/Canadian telecoms, and they're really not much different.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  What's interesting is to look at the population distribution and not simply density. [0] It's an extreme outlier in terms of habitable land vs land area. 5% of it's land is arable, as compared to close to 17% for the United-States. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the land was simply not inhabited. [0] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada/ https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada...
  - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    Sure I already mentioned this caveat regarding that population density figures, but the caveat is nowhere sufficient to defeat the point. Sources will state about 80% of Canada is uninhabited, and 47% of the US. In the UK it' 1-2%. In other words, even assuming you apply the population density figures I mentioned in my previous post to only 20% of Canada or ±50% of the US, you'd still get a large discrepancy in 20 people per square km in Canada, vs 72 in the US, and still around 270 in the UK. Hooking up the same coverage with 3-4 (US) or 13-14 (UK) times fewer people in that area should naturally drive much higher costs per person connected, which may explain prices. And given profit margins of all the big telcos aren't exceptionally high for Canada despite much higher prices, that hypothesis seems quite plausible.