It’s a shame on Canada and on Canadians that foreign competitors are still prohibited from coming into the market.
Allowing Rogers to purchase Shaw was absurd.
The Commissioner of Competition was very strongly opposed to the merger, the court ruled against him, and Canadians had to pay Rogers $13 million CAD because he opposed it.
I was a Shaw Mobile (not Freedom) customer, and Rogers wanted me to drive 600km (both ways) through the Kootenay mountains in winter to get my new SIM cards. I told them where to go.
Rogers is junk and Canada is an oligarchy.
We've been on a waiting list for a doctor ever since. My only option to see a doctor here is to go the emergency room at the closest hospital.
Last year I started feeling exhausted 24/7 and tried to make an appointment, but got turned away from my doctors office because my doctor retired and the new guy didn't want to let me make an appointment.
So here I am on a waiting list, in a city where 10% of the population don't have a doctor either. I've been waiting for over a year.
I wish I could change fields, "once you've seen how the sausage is made, you'll want to be a vegetarian"...
I wish our gov't served us better, and I try my best to enact change, but it's a fool who thinks any country is without its faults.
And I've lived in a few different countries in my life. No country is without faults, but, Canada right now is a mess.
Jokes on me. ;)
I love the land and the people, but, the country itself is a mess. We have already planned our exit.
Western Europe has all those things, is actually welcoming, has sane healthcare, and you don't even need to own a gun!
Are you in software development?
I was a Shaw Mobile (not Freedom) customer, and Rogers wanted me to drive 600km (both ways) through the Kootenay mountains in winter to get my new SIM cards.
Weird. They mailed my new SIM cards to me.
Rogers support is pretty notorious country wide, I'm sure it still varies at a localized level.
I had a Rogers internet install technician come to my house (for Teksavvy because the gov mandates they run the networks for small operators) and instead of drilling a hole through a wall he opened a window a crack ran the cable through and went home. The girl on the phone couldn't believe my story but I'm sure nothing happened in terms of punishment.
This is the outcome of artificial barriers to competition in the name of national benefit. It doesn't matter how absurd your customer story, neither customers nor the upstart businesses have a choice.
They could also have just eliminated our archaic foreign ownership laws. I am surprised this hasn’t come up in trade negotiations. If we want improved productivity then we desperately need competition. If we don’t get serious about this then we’ll continue to languish economically as a nation.
Their system didn't work when setting them up, and I had two different support operators tell me that my only option was to drive to Cranbrook. In the middle of winter. This is a drive that involves 3 mountain passes.
?
They had $10b+ in equity to work with and had ample opportunity to capture ZIRP if they wanted.
Anything inhibiting Shaw’s ability to raise capital was its dual class structure where the Shaw family retained control despite owning a minority of the shares.
They wanted me to drive to the Rogers store in Cranbrook or Kelowna.
There is some foreign competition via roaming, e.g. both T-Mobile and AT&T have US mobile postpaid plans with unlimited Canadian roaming, https://www.att.com/international/canada-roaming/ & https://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/use-your-phone-in-...
For devices with low data (text/email/web) usage, there are vendors of global prepaid eSIMs that last 6-24 months, which roam on Bell and Rogers 5G networks, priced around $5/GB, e.g. Eskimo (Singapore) and AIS (Thailand) eSIMs.
These aren’t real options as anyone calling you back will be forced to pay long distance.
Eskimo (Singapore telco) has both North America and Global eSIMs.
Those don't seem that much cheaper compared to local competitors. For instance the cheapest plan at&t offers is $30 USD/month, but public mobile is offering a 40GB unlimited talk text plan for $29 CAD/month ($21 USD).
No, no it isn't a shame, it's great.
Preventing domestic mergers, and ensuring domestic competition exists are viable alternatives.
With viable alternatives available, when it comes to domestic telco and networking, you want domestic control. A nation is benefited by domestic ownership of its own infrastructure.
This is inline with domestic food production, manufacturing of defense products, transportation infrastructure, and on and on.
Domestic control is an aspect of sovereignty.
Now again, I want competition. The problem isn't foreign competition, it's a lack of domestic.
The Harper Conservatives worked on this, limiting spectrum auction to induce competition and so on.
I suspect someone had a pet peeve, re domestic cost of services. One thing about government, is that often politicians get into the politicking business because something pissed them off.
So I suspect someone was cheesed at costs, or customer service, and made it their thing. Sadly, it was dropped by the next government.
Another example would be the Trudeau Liberals overhauling the entire ombudsman process for banks, along with intense investigation into retail banking processes.
Prior, the ombudsman was an escalation process that ended up at a provincial ombudsman's office... jointly owned by the banks!
Again, I expect someone in the current government was cheesed at banking chicanery.
Regardless, we can get competition without foreign competitors. It just takes a government caring enough.
And it would take just as much push to drop foreign ownership requirements, as to limit spectrum, prevent mergers, etc.
— cross pollination of talent, knowledge, technology, etc;
— less susceptible to being eliminated when a future government caves on some of the rules you’ve mentioned
When the patriot act was passed in the US, suddenly some Canadian credit card holders, whos companies which had processing centers in the US, had all of their transaction info shared with US homeland.
If the corporate entity is domestic, foreign powers won't have control over their domestic corps, managing foreign infra.
Yeah during NAFTA 2, Canadians were all for protecting high prices and very little choice just to show Trump and the USA that they could take their cheap prices and value and shove it.
Rogers, Bell and Telus went on and made Trudeau classify them as Canadian media companies so they would never have any competition from the USA.
I guess Canadians like high prices and little choice..