Canada's population is tightly clustered into a small number of urban areas that have population densities comparable to places like Philadelphia or Vienna.
Despite this, Canada's population centers have nowhere near the quality of public infrastructure of Vienna.
Much like Australia, this means providers build the infrastructure to supply those areas but then the cost is recovered from the dense population areas.
Theres also some capatilism nonsense oligopolies thrown in there, but that's the core issue.
Why doesn't the consumer have a choice? I'd be willing to sacrifice coverage in rural areas in exchange for 50-80% discounted tariffs, for instance.
The Canadian situation is bad-to-zero coverage in rural areas and the world's most expensive cell phone service (think of plans that charge $10 CAD per GB of data) in developed regions.
The money that Canada's two cell phone networks didn't spend covering rural areas didn't reduce prices; it disappeared into shareholder pockets.
I've always wondered why no big international player tried to enter that market, it's ripe for disruption, and the local operators sound like they are far behind.