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Liberals: “We have a real competition problem in this country”

By on October 31, 2009 at 12:58pm in Asides, Mobile News, Various News

cellphone-calcComing right after the CRTC squashed Globalive’s plans to launch their Wind Mobile brand, Liberal consumer affairs critic Dan McTeague said in a statement yesterday that us Canadians “have a real competition problem in this country that is reflected in the high prices Canadian consumers pay for service. We need some real action with concrete proposals to lower prices and improve cellphone and internet service for urban and rural Canadians.”

The Liberals want clear rules and force the current cellphone companies to share their cellphone towers and sign equitable roaming agreements with the new wireless carriers. In addition, McTeague wants to launch the much failed government online cellphone calculator.

In response, Bernard Lord, President of the CWTA (Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association) said “Canadians have many choices for wireless services in a hypercompetitive marketplace, with more than two dozen wireless service providers, including three national carriers, several strong regional players, numerous high-profile resellers, discount brands and several new companies launching services soon.”

Regarding his request for the cellphone calculator, Lord said “The online tool was so limited in its scope and ability that it would have been completely ineffective, and it would have hindered rather than assisted consumers with making informed purchasing decisions.”

Via: CBC

Related posts:

  1. MTS on why Canadian telecom is lagging behind: “Competition, or the lack there of”
  2. Qik: real-time video streaming service for your mobile phone
  3. CRTC mandates cellphone changes to assist those with disabilities
  4. To WIND or not to WIND… that is the question of the day!

Discussion

7 comments for “Liberals: “We have a real competition problem in this country””

  1. Agreed. We all pay for text messages when sending them costs the companies a grand total of $0.00 extra. (Your text message signal is always active)

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    Posted by Anonymous | October 31, 2009, 2:32 pm
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  2. “Many choices”? “Hypercompetitive marketplace”? Whatever meds Bernard Lord is on, they need to either cut the dose or increase it, because clearly what he’s doing now isn’t working.

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    Posted by Khav | October 31, 2009, 5:23 pm
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  3. When the existing companies can make a 50% margin, that’s hardly a hyper competitive marketplace. Even the CWTA only counts 5 carriers in their reports, the 3 big ones and MTS and sasktel, not the two dozen as claimed above. That PR guy is full of s**t.

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    Posted by Sid | November 1, 2009, 10:45 pm
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  4. Are you kidding me?

    Text messages are not with cost to the carriers – Rogers, Bell, Telus, and soon to be WIND, Dave, and Public are BUSINESSES and they have collectively spent BILLIONS of dollars building their networks to offer you wireless voice/text/data service. Just because the cost to do so is largely fixed and there is limited variable cost to sending one text, does not mean it’s free. What is unfair about paying for a service? Get on an unlimited text plan and be done with it…

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    Posted by Dave | November 1, 2009, 11:55 pm
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    • er, sry –

      intended to say “…not without cost to the carriers…”

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      Posted by Dave | November 1, 2009, 11:56 pm

  5. Is there something unfair about a 50% margin?

    SportChek makes a fifty percent margin when they sell you a pair of Nikes? Why don’t we have an online, fed gov sponsored online running shoe calculator??

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    Posted by Dave | November 1, 2009, 11:59 pm
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    • That’s fine, but when I want to buy a pair of shoes, I don’t only have three different stores to choose from. There are a hundred different stores selling hundreds of different types of shoes at all levels of pricing. With shoes, there is actually a competitive marketplace, with cell phone service, there are only three options all at the same price; that’s hardly a competitive marketplace.

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      Posted by Sid Ali | November 2, 2009, 7:05 pm

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