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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

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.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    That's assuming everyone's getting coverage, which isn't really the case. What I would really want to see is the density distribution of the parts of the country that actually have coverage. Eg how many square miles do I need to cover to serve 50% of the broadband users, 75%, 99%. That would give us a way better idea. Lastly, I wouldn't discount the theory that the profit margins might be bad because the companies are inefficient. When there's no competitor or threat to the business it's easy to be inefficient and still end up with profits.

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.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  That's assuming everyone's getting coverage, which isn't really the case. What I would really want to see is the density distribution of the parts of the country that actually have coverage. Eg how many square miles do I need to cover to serve 50% of the broadband users, 75%, 99%. That would give us a way better idea. Lastly, I wouldn't discount the theory that the profit margins might be bad because the companies are inefficient. When there's no competitor or threat to the business it's easy to be inefficient and still end up with profits.