Oh man, we really need this for telecom too. And even more important than their collusion is their political corruption, so the government protects them from competition and funnels endless billions in taxpayer money to them.
There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line.
Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom.
Canada has a ton of land and just not that many people. There's 3 + Videotron major telecom operators servicing a population the size of California spread out over a land area the size of the United States. The Capex and payback period for spinning up a new, competitive, national carrier is wild (there's a pile of bodies there proving my point) which makes this a perfect job for the government.
Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and that extra $5 brings you no benefit, the price difference is nowhere near high enough to justify the claim "people pay roughly half the national average".
https://hellosafe.ca/en/telecommunications/cell-phone-plans/...
My takeaway from that is that Sasktel/MTS were much cheaper for a comparable plan, but the average revenue per user is near-identical - so the effect is mostly just that Sasktel/MTS users got more data with their plans. (Which tracks to me, if you halved the revenue of a provincial-scale carrier, they'd be a huge money loser regardless of how many executive salaries got cut or efficiencies got discovered.)
When I was in toronto the guy at the hotel had a 306 (saskatchewan) phone number because it was cheaper.
Sasktel is a great provider. I have fiber to the home in my house, for instance.
There are a lot of us in Manitoba who know this was a crime and we can do fuck-all to change it
They make great organ donors though!
(Not all were economic failures: you can also be a successful and scrappy going concern and that gets you acquired by bigger pockets with a rubber stamp from government that thinks bigger firms are better for all)
They face a lot less monetary risks and people are harder to fire. Not to mention the additional bureaucracy and administrative weight due to the additional laws and regulations that apply to public services and how being a part of the state means facing more administrators and bureaucrats.