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Rogers: “Canada is a wireless leader”
Ken Engelhart is Senior Vice-President, Regulatory over at Rogers wrote a very interesting piece titled “Canada is a wireless leader”. He gives a great overview on where and why Canada stands around 66% penetration rate when it comes to wireless.
On Where and Why Canada is placed:
“About 66% of Canadians have a cell phone and we are badly behind countries like Greece, where 200% of the population have a cell phone. The foolishness of this measurement should be apparent already. 200% of a population does not exist. What these figures indicate is that there are two phone subscriptions for every man, woman and baby in Greece. In Canada, and in most advanced countries, most adults and teenagers have a cell phone. In Greece however and in many European countries, many people have one cell phone and several subscriptions.
Because Europe is on the GSM system, people have multiple SIM cards that they put in and out of their phones, depending on where they are and what time of day it is, to get the best price or service. These multiple SIM cards are generally a sign that there is something wrong with the cell phone market in that country. They certainly are not a good measurement of the take-up of phone service in an economy.
The best measurement is minutes of use per capita. A report by Merrill Lynch on Sept. 28 showed Canada to be the eighth best in the world using this metric. It is sometimes noted that the U.S. has a much higher level of usage than Canada and this is true. However, the point I am trying to make is that we are well ahead of Britain, France, Germany, Spain and most other countries in terms of the usage of wireless phone service.”
On Pricing:
“The standard and correct way to compare prices among countries is to take total voice revenue and divide it by total voice minutes. On this statistic (called “average revenue per minute”), Canada has some of the lowest prices in the world. Canadians pay on average 8 cents per minute for phone service. The cost is 12 cents in the U.K., 14 cents in France, 15 cents in Italy, 16 cents in Germany and 24 cents in Japan. (It’s just five cents in the U.S.) Canada has very low prices internationally. This is particularly impressive given that we have much more network capacity per customer than most countries including the U.S.”
More here at the National Post
Discussion
12 comments for “Rogers: “Canada is a wireless leader””
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The multiple SIM card argument in Europe is really interesting. In Canada, we had one and only one GSM network operator and it is locking our phones. Tell me, given this zero competition, zero alternative circumstances, how can we get a good price on using the wireless (GSM) network regardless of what metric we are talking about?
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3. Year. Contract.
Enough said.
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Who cares about minutes anymore?
How about you guys look at your unreal data charges? Text messages? THREE YEAR CONTRACTS.
Give me a break. If there’s anything Canada is ‘the leader’ in, it’s exploiting its customers to the fullest extent possible.
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Great… pick one artificial metric that you score well in and use that to claim leadership. Perhaps given the cost of plans people restrict their phone usage…. Nah…
Better metrics might be:
- cost of talk minutes
- data cost/Gb
- nation wide calling
- carrier wide calling
- network coverage
- network speed
- roaming agreements
- SMS costs
- real contract costs (cost over length of contract)
- availability of unlocked phones
- duration of contracts
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Wondering where that pricing information has come from!
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I had to recognize that wireless is Canada is correct (expensive but with godd performance at least) … especially compared to broadband … which is … well … expensive too but very slow and years behind actual standards.
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Funny how they mention nothing about the cost of data plans. I’m also willing to bet Rogers’ calculations don’t account for the System access fee that they recently renamed, or the ‘essentials’ that they charge extra for.
Even if 200% doesn’t exist, 100% is still better than 66%. The question that should be asked is ‘Why don’t 100% of Canadians own mobile phones?’
I would also like to see some unbiased data to support Rogers’ claim that the 200% number from Greece is from subscriptions, and not from handsets.
Rogers claims that this inflated number is because Europeans need to use more than one subscription to get the best rates at any given time. It is easy from this point to conclude that the reason that Canadians don’t have similar numbers is because they have no choice.
By visiting various UK telecom providers websites, you can easily see that each provider provides something unique. Where one has better mobile internet rates, another will have the lowest cost bundle of anytime minutes, and another will offer a large amount of evening/weekend minutes. Notice that all plans have Caller ID and Voicemail. Also notice that you will not find the term ‘long distance’ anywhere. This is largely how these companies compete with each other.
In Canada we find that, with minor variation, all providers charge the same amount for the same services. They also charge remarkably similar amounts for services that, in every other first world country, are included with every plan at no cost. There is no motivation to have more than one subscription, doubly so because up until recently you were unable to use the phone that you purchased with the provider of your choice. The only competition, it seems, that occurs in Canada, is who can legally use the marketing phrases that go in between “Canada’s” and “Network”, such as ‘most reliable’, ‘largest’, ‘fastest’, and so forth.
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What about the minimum costs of owning a cell phone?
In some countries where you can pick up sim cards for virtually nothing, a top up lasts forever so long as use it at least once every 6 months or so, meaning you could own a cell phone for the cost of 1 top up every few years if you use it sparingly.
Apparently that’s a sign of unhealthy wireless industry. Instead they should be forced to spend $15 a month topping up supposedly ‘pay as you go’ phones like we do here.
And as many others have said, compare costs per mb, and text message costs and canada doesn’t even compare.
With logic like this guy’s, it’s no wonder Rogers came up with the bright idea of replacing the SAF with another fee and price rise and thought that that was a good idea.
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What an idiot. Luckily most people at least know that we’re getting screwed and when a cheaper option(s) comes along (wind, public, dave, videotron) customers are going to be leaving by the thousands.
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I’m so unsatisfied with the Rogers. Their service is horrible and 3 yrs contract is just ridiculous.
“Canada is a wireless leader” my a**
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If the penetration rate is too high then it is a sign that the industry is not serving customers well enough. It is a sign that customers are having to purchase muliple accounts because they can’t meet their needs with just one. We shouldn’t concern ourselves too much with penetration rates as compared to european nations because we are a different country in a different situation.
Ken makes some very valid points in his argument. Canada doesn’t lead in every way, but in many ways we are in a good position. We just don’t like to admit it because the media and foreign influences have convinced us otherwise.
I travel in Europe frequently and I’ve never met anyone in Europe who thinks their service is so amazing as people here seem to think it is. We definitely suffer from “grass is greener” syndrome.
In Europe they deal with many many complexities that we don’t, which ultimately can make their mobile experience both expensive and inconvenient.
Don’t call during the day its too expensive
Don’t call from your landline because it costs more than if you call from your mobile
You can text me from T-Mobile, but don’t text me from Vodaphone because it costs more
M-F during the day call this one number and then evenings call this other number and on weekends call this third number
Don’t call me, just text me
Don’t text me, just call me
etc
etc
Be careful what you wish for. Europe is not some wireless oasis where everything is cheap and friendly.
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What a load of BS Rogers is trying to feed to Canadians again, and I bet many Canadians are eating it, based on how Rogers (and the whole industry) in Canada already manages to bully the Canadian consumer as well as the Canadian government.
I am from Europe myself, and, while obviously there are differences between different countries in Europe, I can testify that no one in Europe is switching between several SIM cards all day to get the best prices. It’s interesting how Ken Engelhart pulled up Greece of all countries in Europe, and it’s also good to note that in Canada switching between different SIM cards and operators is not even possible, because there’s been only one GSM operator here and the phones are locked to that one operator and a 3 year contract.
The OECD just ranked Canada as one of the most expensive countries in the developed world, together with the US, to use a cell phone, while Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands are the cheapest. But to Rogers and Ken Engelhart, an organization like the OECD obviously means nothing. Rogers is much better judging themselves by their own numbers that they invent.
When is Rogers, and the Canadian telecom industry in general, going to learn that the best way to do business and to win the hearts and minds of more consumers is by doing _honest_ business and _honestly_ allowing competition, including competition from abroad? Why constantly try to come up with foul excuses and awkward comments instead to support such bizarre things as the System Access Fee, locked phones and overpriced services, and lack of competition and innovation in general?
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