My anecdotal guess is that the infrastructure costs are higher in Canada due to lower population density. Lots more area to cover to achieve the same coverage.
Other countries like Australia have similar densities and infrastructure costs yet still have way lower prices. The Canadian telecom industry is sheltered and there's really only 3 big players. Foreign competition isn't allowed so there's no possibility of Verizon or Vodafone coming in and shaking things up.
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/canadian-provinces-and-t... https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/european-countries-by-po...
I'm not posting enough references here, but this whole conversation has been so limited in facts and proportion.
The point is the government wants carriers to provide service everywhere, which includes places like Nunavut, 0.019 persons per square mile.
There are local initiatives, and some are really fantastic, but it's difficult to bootstrap those everywhere.
Go to https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/comm/fourprov.htm and search for Nunavut and see who comes up.
These prices need to come down, more competition and local initiatives need to happen, and more innovation for systems like mesh networks. It is particularly upsetting when ways can't be found to share infrastructure. But if providing access to every Canadian is the goal (rather than for every person in a city at a cost less than a bag of groceries) there is probably some logic to the existing system.
Some people will say "just pay for Starlink everywhere," but it's really not ok for a country's access to be owned by another country (as long as Musk is still on earth), wired ultimately has advantages, and there are probably benefits to supporting wired infrastructure, and competition and choice are important.
The cost difference between Telstra and Telus/Bell/Rogers is double, but over a month tens of dollars is not a significant part of a budget, and when consuming video &c there's really not that much different between 30 - 40 GB (unlimited is another story). For people on a very limited budget, there are lower cost plans, but even with the Telstra plan it's not comparable to wired.
Don't get me wrong, I think Canada, right or wrong, coddles these big carriers as a defence against international players, which creates an uneven playing field here (sharing infrastructure at competitive rates seemed like a fair recourse). I am just trying to bring more perspective to the table than "Ontario has a high density so should be cheap," besides the obvious "we are not just talking about Ontario or Toronto here."
Wired is the real thing to discuss here, and what may get lost in the shuffle.
The population density of the areas people live (that actually have telco service) is much much much higher than 14 people per sq. km.
The Greater Toronto Area has a population density of 849/sq. km[1]. Why are its prices not lower than, or at least comparable to all of Europe?
Revolut had to quit the canadian market because of the cartel banks..