I've spent much of my career working for two of the big three, and the reality of this video hits hard. The CRTC is a joke.

https://youtu.be/0ilMx7k7mso

And now with Teksavvy looking for a buyer... I'm really bummed about this to be honest. I've been with them for almost ten years now and they've been the best.

Every time they raised their rates (because of the shitty policies of the CRTC) they always explained their reasons and apologized profusely. They always campaigned for lower rates and reported on shady dealings at the CRTC... sigh Depressing times.

I hope whoever buys them retains their customer service department. Seriously, best customer service I've ever had.

A Google Fi plan with unlimited North American roaming is like 20USD on a multi-line plan...

Why doesn’t a single company just roll in and offer unlimited mobile data and shake things up?

Because they can make more money investing the same resources into the existing corrupt oligopoly. The big three are all heavily invested in each other; the reasons why none of them make a big move to try and disrupt the other two are the exact same reasons no other whale comes along and messes up the racket. It is better for capital this way!!

This context should make this all the more obvious: in the end, there is no competition between entrenched capital because it's all the same capital.

One has to wonder… Why doesn’t a single company just roll in and offer unlimited mobile data and shake things up? Oligopoly is the word you’re looking for, a handful of companies (ie the “big three”) operating together like a single, corporate monstrosity known as a monopoly thanks to the popularized board game

I have to slightly quibble and disagree here. The reason we have high prices is because of the oligopoly, but the oligopoly is not the reason (or at least not the main reason) that another company doesn't sweep in and shake things up.

First of all, the reason for that is partly regulatory. The Canadian government has mandated Canadian ownership rules for our telecom networks which prevents a larger (American or other international firm) from coming in and sweeping out our existing telcos. While some would rather AT&T or Verizon come in and replace Bell or Rogers, the reality is that they're not going to grow the market meaningfully and they'll pretty quickly conglomerate together or buy one another up like they've already been doing and we'll be right back to our existing status quo. On top of that, those ownership rules do also have a national security argument behind them, people would be much less pleased if a national scale telco was owned by Saudi Arabia for instance.

The real reason for the oligopoly in the first place though is that building out telecom networks, be they fibre or wireless, is expensive, and the costs scale downwards massively with a greater customer base. It costs a lot to build fibre out to a neighbourhood to serve one home, that same build is dirt cheap if it's serving 100. In Canada, we simply do not have the density to economically support multiple competing high quality telecom networks. In Toronto, the highest density spot in the highest density region, we still only have a single fibre to the home provider (Bell), and it's only in the absolute highest density points (new build high rises) that we see Beanfield show up as a true fibre to the home competitor.

The fundamental economics of telecom networks does not support a scenario where we have 4+ fibre competitors in the same geographic area, meaning we will never have true competition between them. That is why the only way to avoid an oligopoly is to nationalize (or provincialize, or municipalize) the actual fibre infrastructure and create a virtual network provider market on top where the barriers to entry are low enough to get a lot of competition.

It's tricky because if we allowed competition our telcos would get steamrolled by American telcos and many would die, but we would end up with a better/cheaper service for Canadians.

For now I am happy with my $9 a month phone plan and don't want anyone to take it away from me. I think they are already jacking the price up to $15 for new users.

You know your government is screwing up badly when even the USA has better telecom.

The word you are looking for is "telecartel".

I was with Rogers before (now with Fizz, cheaper.) After your data cap, you get unlimited data but slow (like Public Mobile if I understand well)

What is the data connection speed like? Is it fast?

try oxio.ca its like half the price of shaw

The only reason I’m with Freedom mobile is the unlimited data. I have teens and data overages would kill me. This way, data just slows to a crawl after their monthly cap.