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.
They wanted me to drive to the Rogers store in Cranbrook or Kelowna.
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.