This just in: B.C. wireless customers aren't happy with lack of competition in industry

by Stephen Hui on October 17th, 2013 at 12:12 PM

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Chances are, if you have a mobile phone, you hold an opinion about the wireless industry in this country. And it's probably not a charitable one. (If you don't own a cellphone, I'm impressed.)

A new poll from Insights West confirms what we already know: most B.C. residents—71 percent, in fact—think there is "not enough" competition in the Canadian wireless sector.

Here's some other results of the online study of 704 B.C. adults, which was conducted from September 26 to October 2:

82 percent of British Columbians believe Canada's wireless rates are among the highest on the planet;
81 percent think it's unfair for the Big Three to control 85 percent of wireless services in Canada;
79 percent feel the country needs a fourth major wireless carrier;
39 percent believe that the federal government is trying to protect consumers.

Asked whether the federal government or wireless industry has the best interests of consumers in mind, 69 percent of survey respondents picked neither or said they were unsure. Sounds like we're not hopeful that things will change anytime soon.

Comments

1 Comments

David

Oct 17, 2013 at 2:30pm

In the long run adding a fourth major carrier wouldn't change a thing. They might initially make a big splash and offer low introductory pricing to grab market share but would eventually settle into the game the other 3 play: offer identical plans at identical prices and hope people hate them less than they hate the others.
There's no help coming from the USA. Things are even worse there with just two major players and two secondary ones who don't cover the whole country. Even the two major players have spotty performance in some areas which can give consumers no choice whatsoever.
The most recent changes consumers asked for in Canada have backfired. Moving to 2 year contracts instead of 3 year ones caused huge increases in monthly plan rates. Gone are the $39/mo plans with reasonable amounts of talk time and data. Today it's hard to find anything under $70/mo with a decent amount of data.
Outside North America most people buy their phones and phone service separately. Carriers are forced to compete on price and customer service because users can go elsewhere any time they like.
The locked-in contract model hides the cost of service by merging it with a variable device subsidy. Most carriers still play the game of tying certain plans to certain hardware instead of saying flat out "you sign up with us and we'll give you $x towards a new phone and you're required to pay us back at a rate of $y per month".
The subsidized model we have makes phones look cheap or even free and has created an environment in which you'd be stupid not to get a new phone every 2 years. That benefits Apple, LG and Samsung, etc., but has created huge piles of e-waste that get shipped to impoverished nations so we don't have to deal with the consequences of our addiction to cheap phone upgrades.