> Just goes to show that Canadian telecom policy is controlled by telecoms, not by the government. It's very cozy and regularly functions to discourage competition.

It's easy to say that, but Canada has a smaller population than California, but spread over the surface area larger than that of the United States. How many carriers, and how much competition, can you possibly expect in that environment? Especially in an industry that requires so much infrastructure.

Canada at the national level has Bell, Telus and Rogers/Fido. There's a few more regional players like Freedom Mobile, and then there's Videotron in Quebec.

Then on top of that there's the former Crown Corporation (now subsidiary of Bell/BCE) NorthwesTel, which provides services in the Territories (i.e the north of the north, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut).