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.
It sucks but I had to switch away because I needed fibre speeds for working from home, and Bell still refuses to lease their fibre network to Teksavvy and the CRTC won’t make them.
I don’t think you can have a Canadian number on Google Fi, so anyone with a Canadian number calling you would be making international calls, which would be subject to the pricing on their plans.
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.
Network sharing schemes are a popular strategy to introduce competition without getting other large players, often external, in the system. We’ve done it with telephone, wired internet. Many other countries have done it too. We’re just way too soft with the regulation needed to make it happen. Instead we’re prone to coddling ROBeLUS and letting our alternative providers get driven out of business by them.
…what do you get for $9 a month? I’m guessing you’re not in Ontario? Since I was a loyal long term customer I was lucky to get my bill down to 40 minus 10 bucks promotionally (which doesn’t show up in my account or say how long it’ll last) from 60 a month for 15GB of data. And now of course you can get more data for the same price or some shit as a new customer
Opening up to international competition is one option… Honestly we could have Canadian companies be competitive but that would involve work and effort from all levels: government, consumer, and business.
These dare the days of everyone wanting everything for free, but I’m not talking lazy hobos - I’m talking the entitled rich who think they can just keep sucking the rest of us dry indefinitely
I am with public mobile. It is available Canada-wide. The plan is $15 for calls and text + 250 mb data. Autopay, loyalty and other bonuses bring it down to $9. It works for me. Most people probably need at least the $30 ($24 for me with bonuses) plan.
It think that could needs a few more asterisks lol
With 250MB a month you’re not going to care if it’s fast. Chances are they lease bandwidth and connections from the big companies, so you’ll get pretty much the same speeds (which will be of concern for their $30 a month packages)
Hmm that’s not bad, I was looking at their offerings not too long ago, I’d want the $30 plan you mention.
I’ve got a VoIP number with unlimited texting and verification support (some VoIP numbers charge a lot extra for that) for under $6 a month, but for that I’d need an at home internet connection (or mobile which negates the need for a VoIP number). I’m going to try out just using public wifi for a bit, once my last month of Freedom runs out.
When I looked at Public Mobile they were about on par with Freedom
MagicApp, calls and texting in Canada and the US but you need to pick an American interchange and number, which hopefully shouldn’t be an issue. When I went to add it to my bank account the website stated Canadian numbers only, but it accepted the one I have with a New York area code.
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.
Continue the thought exercise to its logical conclusion:
A new big player comes in and attempts to disrupt the marketplace
A price war ensues where two or three major players try to underbid each other with loss leaders and attractive features users demand
Everyone else is bled to death because they don’t have billions of dollars in their war chests to run at a loss for five or ten years
Either the war continues until there are is one, or the remaining parties revert to an oligarchy and start cooperating
The new “big three” exploit their market position to raise prices and strip features so they can recoup all the money they burned to bury their competition and make the whole thing worthwhile
This was a nice vacation for consumers, but what is in it for investors? Why would they piss away all that money trying to claw market share away from Brand X when they can just buy shares of Brand X? They have been working for more than a century to create the market conditions that exist right now, they only stand to lose by disrupting it.
That’s great and all, but we live in a real world where there’s multiple possible outcomes, like actual anti monopoly/ oligopoly / pro competitive practices, regulations. A CRTC with teeth etc
Sorry, yes, there are lots of ways it could shake down. But this is the way that is ideal for the disrupting party. They have the same objectives that the incumbents do: make money. Show me a consumer telecom network anywhere in the world that is squeezing more out of each customer than ours does. There are very friggin’ few!! So anyone who comes along to disrupt the market is ultimately going to want to restore it to just the way it is now, except with their ownership instead of someone else’s. Any other outcome would be even more pointless than that. My argument is you can achieve that much cheaper by simply buying into the existing companies rather than competing with them.
anti monopoly/ oligopoly / pro competitive practices, regulations. A CRTC with teeth etc
I mean none of those things have anything to do with the question: why doesn’t a new player come along and offer a consumer-friendly product?
Because it’s simply too expensive to build out 4 different fibre optic networks to all the same neighbourhoods, which is the absolute bare minimum number needed to get some semblance of competition.
We’ll never have true competiton in wired, to the home, infrastructure, and wired will fundamentally always out perform wireless. Wired networks should be built out by utilities or municipalities and then virtual network operators (with comparatively low barrier to entry) can compete on top of the same base infrastructure.
Blazing fast. T-mobile for example can provide speeds up to 220Mbps. I think I’ve gotten like 75Mbps in Toronto, I’m lucky to get 20Mbps in my small city (band issue, not congestion)
I almost worked as a CSR for T-Mobile in the early 2010s and I remember them having $20 a month unlimited calling and texting when we were being gouged for that, before data was a big thing
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.
Last I checked I think the competition is starting to offer this as well.
Americans have had unlimited without caps since 2017. It’s false advertising for Freedom to call what they offer unlimited. Everything slows to a crawl (about 30KB/s for me, which is abysmal considering I found a post from 2019 saying they used to cap at 250KB/s) and most modern apps and websites can’t handle this and say there’s no connection or just time out.
I can download torrents like the new episodes of It’s Always Sunny at a trickle without issue though 🤔 which doesn’t take long at all with x265 encoding
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.
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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.
It sucks but I had to switch away because I needed fibre speeds for working from home, and Bell still refuses to lease their fibre network to Teksavvy and the CRTC won’t make them.
Teksavvy is selling? Dang. I switched to Fizz a couple years ago since it was a lot cheaper, but this is terrible news for themarket as a whole :(
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
try oxio.ca its like half the price of shaw
A Google Fi plan with unlimited North American roaming is like 20USD on a multi-line plan…
I don’t think you can have a Canadian number on Google Fi, so anyone with a Canadian number calling you would be making international calls, which would be subject to the pricing on their plans.
You could also use it as a data SIM and have a Canadian number only for calls.
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.
Network sharing schemes are a popular strategy to introduce competition without getting other large players, often external, in the system. We’ve done it with telephone, wired internet. Many other countries have done it too. We’re just way too soft with the regulation needed to make it happen. Instead we’re prone to coddling ROBeLUS and letting our alternative providers get driven out of business by them.
I’m perfectly 100% ok with this!
…what do you get for $9 a month? I’m guessing you’re not in Ontario? Since I was a loyal long term customer I was lucky to get my bill down to 40 minus 10 bucks promotionally (which doesn’t show up in my account or say how long it’ll last) from 60 a month for 15GB of data. And now of course you can get more data for the same price or some shit as a new customer
Opening up to international competition is one option… Honestly we could have Canadian companies be competitive but that would involve work and effort from all levels: government, consumer, and business.
These dare the days of everyone wanting everything for free, but I’m not talking lazy hobos - I’m talking the entitled rich who think they can just keep sucking the rest of us dry indefinitely
I am with public mobile. It is available Canada-wide. The plan is $15 for calls and text + 250 mb data. Autopay, loyalty and other bonuses bring it down to $9. It works for me. Most people probably need at least the $30 ($24 for me with bonuses) plan.
It think that could needs a few more asterisks lol
What are internet speeds like though? Is it fast?
With 250MB a month you’re not going to care if it’s fast. Chances are they lease bandwidth and connections from the big companies, so you’ll get pretty much the same speeds (which will be of concern for their $30 a month packages)
Public Mobile is a Telus brand, FYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Mobile
Hmm that’s not bad, I was looking at their offerings not too long ago, I’d want the $30 plan you mention.
I’ve got a VoIP number with unlimited texting and verification support (some VoIP numbers charge a lot extra for that) for under $6 a month, but for that I’d need an at home internet connection (or mobile which negates the need for a VoIP number). I’m going to try out just using public wifi for a bit, once my last month of Freedom runs out.
When I looked at Public Mobile they were about on par with Freedom
Who are you getting VoIP and texting from? A while back I was trying to find a way to text without a mobile number and didn’t have any luck.
MagicApp, calls and texting in Canada and the US but you need to pick an American interchange and number, which hopefully shouldn’t be an issue. When I went to add it to my bank account the website stated Canadian numbers only, but it accepted the one I have with a New York area code.
I use voip.ms
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.
Continue the thought exercise to its logical conclusion:
A new big player comes in and attempts to disrupt the marketplace
A price war ensues where two or three major players try to underbid each other with loss leaders and attractive features users demand
Everyone else is bled to death because they don’t have billions of dollars in their war chests to run at a loss for five or ten years
Either the war continues until there are is one, or the remaining parties revert to an oligarchy and start cooperating
The new “big three” exploit their market position to raise prices and strip features so they can recoup all the money they burned to bury their competition and make the whole thing worthwhile
This was a nice vacation for consumers, but what is in it for investors? Why would they piss away all that money trying to claw market share away from Brand X when they can just buy shares of Brand X? They have been working for more than a century to create the market conditions that exist right now, they only stand to lose by disrupting it.
That’s great and all, but we live in a real world where there’s multiple possible outcomes, like actual anti monopoly/ oligopoly / pro competitive practices, regulations. A CRTC with teeth etc
Sorry, yes, there are lots of ways it could shake down. But this is the way that is ideal for the disrupting party. They have the same objectives that the incumbents do: make money. Show me a consumer telecom network anywhere in the world that is squeezing more out of each customer than ours does. There are very friggin’ few!! So anyone who comes along to disrupt the market is ultimately going to want to restore it to just the way it is now, except with their ownership instead of someone else’s. Any other outcome would be even more pointless than that. My argument is you can achieve that much cheaper by simply buying into the existing companies rather than competing with them.
I mean none of those things have anything to do with the question: why doesn’t a new player come along and offer a consumer-friendly product?
Because it’s simply too expensive to build out 4 different fibre optic networks to all the same neighbourhoods, which is the absolute bare minimum number needed to get some semblance of competition.
We’ll never have true competiton in wired, to the home, infrastructure, and wired will fundamentally always out perform wireless. Wired networks should be built out by utilities or municipalities and then virtual network operators (with comparatively low barrier to entry) can compete on top of the same base infrastructure.
You know your government is screwing up badly when even the USA has better telecom.
The word you are looking for is “telecartel”.
What is the data connection speed like? Is it fast?
Blazing fast. T-mobile for example can provide speeds up to 220Mbps. I think I’ve gotten like 75Mbps in Toronto, I’m lucky to get 20Mbps in my small city (band issue, not congestion)
I almost worked as a CSR for T-Mobile in the early 2010s and I remember them having $20 a month unlimited calling and texting when we were being gouged for that, before data was a big thing
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.
Last I checked I think the competition is starting to offer this as well.
Americans have had unlimited without caps since 2017. It’s false advertising for Freedom to call what they offer unlimited. Everything slows to a crawl (about 30KB/s for me, which is abysmal considering I found a post from 2019 saying they used to cap at 250KB/s) and most modern apps and websites can’t handle this and say there’s no connection or just time out.
I can download torrents like the new episodes of It’s Always Sunny at a trickle without issue though 🤔 which doesn’t take long at all with x265 encoding
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.
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)