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In case you are wondering why that's the case: https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/ https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/ > The Big 3 Canadi

by dewey 5y ago

In case you are wondering why that's the case: https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/ https://cansumer.ca/canada-phone-plan-pricing/ > The Big 3 Canadian telecom companies (Bell, Rogers and Telus) own 90% of the market and charge higher prices due to a lack of competition.

988747 5y ago
In Poland we have 4 big telecoms and they compete like crazy with each other. I can't see why having 3 would be any different.
- stavros 5y ago
  Because of cartels.
- fckthisguy 5y ago
  In this case, I think they have an established status quo, with different providers being the clear winner in certain markets, so they don't compete directly. At least, not very much.
  - cunthorpe 5y ago
    No, it's because telcos cartels are illegal in Europe and there are actual consequences. European telcos are no saints at all but they occasionally get fined and things are a little better for a few years. Just as an example, many tried to shorten the "month" to 28 days and they got a combined €228M fine in early 2020: https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_a_28_giorni_multa_da_228_milioni_di_euro_dell_antitrust_alle_compagnie-247267509/ https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_... €228M for essentially a 7% hike in pricing.
  - bobiny 5y ago
    I think that's what antimonopoly laws are for. As a Russia citizen, mobile and internet prices in supposedly more technologically advanced countries just blow my mind.
- agilob 5y ago
  It was like that in Poland before Play joined the market, I remember watching TV and there were ads from established network simply attacking Play "In Orange you can have X, which is 15% better than our competitor <Play logo in background>"
  - agilob 5y ago
    Cant edit this anymore. But telecom prices were stagnating in Poland for a long time, then Play joined the forces and in 3 years prices were cut at least 50% on everything. The trick was that Play built their own IT-telecom infrastructure, not based on existing from Orange.
- konschubert 5y ago
  I once read somewhere that it's been observed in many countries that when telecom markets go from 4 to 3, competition tanks.
  - fart32 5y ago
    I don't know about that, but in CZ (right next to PL), there are 3 telecom companies and competition is pretty much non-existent. You can save some money by switching, but you'd need to do that every year, as those better offers come with an expiration. After many years, I've recently started to think about just cancelling it, because that's probably the only way to let these companies know that they can stick those offers up their... Fixed lines, on the other hand, are fast, cheap and there's no data cap.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  Do the Polish telcos also all operate in these spaces? - Newspapers - TV stations/channels - Radio stations - Content streaming services (a la Netflix) - Land-based telco (phone, cable, fiber) - Wireless telco Each of the providers in Canada does all of those things to some degree or other and because they own news outlets they wield a lot of political influence. Combine that with the fact that most of the people who have been in charge of our telco regulator have ties to these media conglomerates, it becomes pretty clear it's a captured market. So much so that it's newsworthy when someone actually doesn't just rubber stamp everything[1]. It also means external competition is limited to being unprofitable, so newcomers who enter the market don't tend to stay long and generally just get bought out by the incumbents. It's a mess and no political party seems to think it's an issue worth pursuing. [1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/careers-leadership/the-crtcs-jean-pierre-blais-speaking-truth-to-power/article15224721/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/c...
GekkePrutser 5y ago
These prices are batshit insane. Here you get 20GB for 20 euro on prepaid with unlimited calling (which I never use at all - all my calls are on Whatsapp etc :') ). Or 5GB for 10 euro. I use the 20 euro plan as my 4G backup for when my fibre goes down and I worked a whole week off the 20GB during the first lockdown when there was such an issue (I do shut down some stuff like steam downloads and netflix with a script on my router when it's on failover). It really saved my bacon. The good thing about it is that it's even prepaid so I can just load money up on it when I need it. Strange thing is, we have 3 mobile operators here too (not counting the many MVNOs). Shouldn't be a barrier to decent competition. If you have more than 3 the available radio spectrum starts getting diluted anyway.
- neom 5y ago
  Our carriers argue that the country is huge and the population is low, so providing service/upgrades across it is expensive, in Toronto I'm effectively subsidizing a village of 6 somewhere random up north. However... this explanation is mostly bullshit at this point in time.
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    It is bullshit. On regions where there’s a strong local competitor (videotron in Quebec, Sasktel in Saskatchewan) the big three do lower their prices and offer more competitive plans - so they do have significant wiggle room without sacrificing a ton of profit. There was even a way to, say, register a phone number in Saskatchewan and use it in say Ontario, leveraging a cross-carrier agreement to basically use Rogers or Bell infrastructure at Sasktel prices. I think they found and closed this loophole, though.
  - kevincox 5y ago
    While that is true it is a simplification. There are providers that service only the main populations such as FREEDOM (was WIND). However many people decided against these because they have to pay extra when leaving the city, such as visiting a cottage or going camping. So there is at least some market demand for providing wide coverage included in your base plan. (I don't really understand it though, because Freedom Mobile has agreements to roam on the other networks and while the cost is much increased, for people who leave the city once every month or two it doesn't add up to the cost of the more expensive providers. These days Freedom even includes some included roaming in their plans, presumable to help customers see this line of thinking.)
xvf22 5y ago
Telus and Bell partner on wireless so we have even less choice.
johnwalkr 5y ago
And they probably still argue that 1GB is 1,000,000 emails or 100,000 web pages based on outdated number. The speeds are fast though so you can be sure when you tether just as MS Office is updating you run out of data in about a minute.

by dewey 5y ago

988747 5y ago

In Poland we have 4 big telecoms and they compete like crazy with each other. I can't see why having 3 would be any different.

stavros 5y ago
Because of cartels.
fckthisguy 5y ago
In this case, I think they have an established status quo, with different providers being the clear winner in certain markets, so they don't compete directly. At least, not very much.
- cunthorpe 5y ago
  No, it's because telcos cartels are illegal in Europe and there are actual consequences. European telcos are no saints at all but they occasionally get fined and things are a little better for a few years. Just as an example, many tried to shorten the "month" to 28 days and they got a combined €228M fine in early 2020: https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_a_28_giorni_multa_da_228_milioni_di_euro_dell_antitrust_alle_compagnie-247267509/ https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2020/01/31/news/bollette_... €228M for essentially a 7% hike in pricing.
- bobiny 5y ago
  I think that's what antimonopoly laws are for. As a Russia citizen, mobile and internet prices in supposedly more technologically advanced countries just blow my mind.
agilob 5y ago
It was like that in Poland before Play joined the market, I remember watching TV and there were ads from established network simply attacking Play "In Orange you can have X, which is 15% better than our competitor <Play logo in background>"
- agilob 5y ago
  Cant edit this anymore. But telecom prices were stagnating in Poland for a long time, then Play joined the forces and in 3 years prices were cut at least 50% on everything. The trick was that Play built their own IT-telecom infrastructure, not based on existing from Orange.
konschubert 5y ago
I once read somewhere that it's been observed in many countries that when telecom markets go from 4 to 3, competition tanks.
- fart32 5y ago
  I don't know about that, but in CZ (right next to PL), there are 3 telecom companies and competition is pretty much non-existent. You can save some money by switching, but you'd need to do that every year, as those better offers come with an expiration. After many years, I've recently started to think about just cancelling it, because that's probably the only way to let these companies know that they can stick those offers up their... Fixed lines, on the other hand, are fast, cheap and there's no data cap.
BeefWellington 5y ago
Do the Polish telcos also all operate in these spaces? - Newspapers - TV stations/channels - Radio stations - Content streaming services (a la Netflix) - Land-based telco (phone, cable, fiber) - Wireless telco Each of the providers in Canada does all of those things to some degree or other and because they own news outlets they wield a lot of political influence. Combine that with the fact that most of the people who have been in charge of our telco regulator have ties to these media conglomerates, it becomes pretty clear it's a captured market. So much so that it's newsworthy when someone actually doesn't just rubber stamp everything[1]. It also means external competition is limited to being unprofitable, so newcomers who enter the market don't tend to stay long and generally just get bought out by the incumbents. It's a mess and no political party seems to think it's an issue worth pursuing. [1]: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/careers-leadership/the-crtcs-jean-pierre-blais-speaking-truth-to-power/article15224721/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/c...

GekkePrutser 5y ago

These prices are batshit insane. Here you get 20GB for 20 euro on prepaid with unlimited calling (which I never use at all - all my calls are on Whatsapp etc :') ). Or 5GB for 10 euro. I use the 20 euro plan as my 4G backup for when my fibre goes down and I worked a whole week off the 20GB during the first lockdown when there was such an issue (I do shut down some stuff like steam downloads and netflix with a script on my router when it's on failover). It really saved my bacon. The good thing about it is that it's even prepaid so I can just load money up on it when I need it. Strange thing is, we have 3 mobile operators here too (not counting the many MVNOs). Shouldn't be a barrier to decent competition. If you have more than 3 the available radio spectrum starts getting diluted anyway.

neom 5y ago
Our carriers argue that the country is huge and the population is low, so providing service/upgrades across it is expensive, in Toronto I'm effectively subsidizing a village of 6 somewhere random up north. However... this explanation is mostly bullshit at this point in time.
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  It is bullshit. On regions where there’s a strong local competitor (videotron in Quebec, Sasktel in Saskatchewan) the big three do lower their prices and offer more competitive plans - so they do have significant wiggle room without sacrificing a ton of profit. There was even a way to, say, register a phone number in Saskatchewan and use it in say Ontario, leveraging a cross-carrier agreement to basically use Rogers or Bell infrastructure at Sasktel prices. I think they found and closed this loophole, though.
- kevincox 5y ago
  While that is true it is a simplification. There are providers that service only the main populations such as FREEDOM (was WIND). However many people decided against these because they have to pay extra when leaving the city, such as visiting a cottage or going camping. So there is at least some market demand for providing wide coverage included in your base plan. (I don't really understand it though, because Freedom Mobile has agreements to roam on the other networks and while the cost is much increased, for people who leave the city once every month or two it doesn't add up to the cost of the more expensive providers. These days Freedom even includes some included roaming in their plans, presumable to help customers see this line of thinking.)

xvf22 5y ago

Telus and Bell partner on wireless so we have even less choice.

johnwalkr 5y ago

And they probably still argue that 1GB is 1,000,000 emails or 100,000 web pages based on outdated number. The speeds are fast though so you can be sure when you tether just as MS Office is updating you run out of data in about a minute.