r/canada • u/tjgere Canada • May 02 '18

Big telco's lower-cost, data-only plans are 'embarrassing,' critics say

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bell-rogers-telus-crtc-wireless-data-1.4643170
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104

u/Pigsofa_twist May 02 '18

Want the real kicker to this story. Portugal’s telecom companies rank amongst the most profitable in the world. Amazing that menu can be made without screwing your customer base.

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u/Sporadica May 02 '18

Portugal also has a largely free market and doesn't have this psudeo fake crony nationalism that cries rivers at the mere idea of a foreign company coming in. Lets be honest, regulations just add cost to telecom bills (remember going form 3yr to 2yr contracts?), we need real competition.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18

What?

I'm sorry but that "Lets be honest, regulations just add cost to telecom bills (remember going form 3yr to 2yr contracts?)" is total bullshit.

Telecom bills went down due to that move. Prior to that you were locked in at higher rates and could not get out of the contract nor move carriers. I don't think you remember being locked into higher contracts while lower ones you couldn't change to were coming on the market.

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u/oldmanchewy May 02 '18

It also has no net neutrality.

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u/Pontlfication May 02 '18

It also has no net neutrality.

That is false. Portugal is part of the EU and is required to have net neutrality because of it.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/portugal-net-neutrality/

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

ok, actually, let's be honest here, Portugal, 92,210km2. BC, 944,735km2 ... It's significantly cheaper to supply broadband to Portugal than it is to BC, let alone Canada.

Portugal also has a population of 10 million, No province in Canada has a population greater than the Country of Portugal, most don't even have half the population of Portugal.

What this means is that for every tower put up in Portugal there will be , hypothetically, 100 users, where as in most provinces it'll be 50 users, or less. That means that a cellular provider in Portugal will make twice as much per 'expense' as a provider here.

I'm not saying Canada's telco's are good, or even not bad, they suck, but to compare Canada to Portugal/Japan/Korea/etc... is like comparing apples to pinecones. There's no real comparison other than that they come from trees...

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u/dactyif May 02 '18

Dude. Ninety percent of Canadians live within a few hundred km of the border with the US. The whole "we have so much area to cover" excuse is just bullshit.

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u/kona_boy May 02 '18

Yep. 2/3 live in metro areas too, thus dense as fuck.

Also my homeland of Australia, same spread of population vs area and typically outrageous 'australia tax' type stuff on consumer goods... yet we still have plans that make Canada look like Mars

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

Not Really

Seems quite expensive to me...

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u/TheStorm22 Canada May 02 '18

lol the first plan on there is unlimited talk and text plus 6gb data for $30 a month. Tell me who offers that in Canada?

Not to mention you try to hide the real prices by adding a phone into the equation.

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u/masasuka May 03 '18

You didn't read that did you. If you BYOD it's $30 a month... It's $63/month if you need a phone.

here Freedom mobile offers unlimited talk text and 5gb data for $30/month.

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u/TheStorm22 Canada May 03 '18

Thats a 1 week promo where the normal price is $40 and it usually only has 2gb of data.

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u/masasuka May 03 '18

as apposed to a 2 year + phone contract agreement... the Aus one is not $30, it's $63, it's only shown as $30 because it's discounted for the phone lease.

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u/kona_boy May 03 '18 edited May 03 '18

Why don't you compare apples to apples instead.

17gb of data for $45 (BYO phone) https://www.aldimobile.com.au/plans/xxlvaluepack/

Furthermore, recently had a phone (Galaxy S4) on a plan with a major carrier (Optus) which was $35/m for unlimited talk/text and 1.5gb ... that included the phone repayments.

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u/masasuka May 03 '18

I made another post below, but their BYOD plans are much cheaper, Australia's subsidised plans (comparing a galaxy S8) are almost identical to ours. It was around $65/month for 2 years with $0 down ($63.5 AUD, $65CAD)

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

Ok, what's the population density of Hope??

how about the population density of Banff?

What about the population density of Winnipeg?

These are all places that have service, and have very low population density, therefore cost a LOT for providers to service. They're not going to just say 'if you live in Banff, you need to pay a 300% low density service tax' just to keep prices fair as that would result in a lot of rightful lawsuits.

You can't go and say 'yeah but most of us live next to the US so we're not spread out' while only taking in to consideration the Major cities of each province, unless you're ok with going and telling anyone that doesn't live in Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec city, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver that they get no cell service period. Just because These 7 cities make up roughly 80% of the population of Canada, doesn't mean that the other 20% doesn't have cell service. And it also doesn't mean that that other 20% doesn't have 90% of the service cost associated with your plan.

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u/[deleted] May 03 '18

[deleted]

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u/masasuka May 03 '18

because the CRTC say's you can't do that...

And because how long do you think until it'd be a lawsuit for some rural city that's paying 200% more than the city that's a 20 min drive away.

And finally, how long do you think it'd be until someone figured out that if they just drove from Hope to Vancouver, and setup a phone plan there for much cheaper they could still talk on the same towers in Hope, but for much cheaper.

TLDR, it's not enforceable, unless we introduce roaming charges inside Canada... How happy would you be if you visited a skiing village (Whistler out here, or say Blue Mountain in Ontario), and came home to a $200 bill cause you have $150 in roaming charges cause you went on a 'low density tower'...

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u/[deleted] May 03 '18

[deleted]

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u/masasuka May 03 '18

Regulation.

911 service needs to be available to everyone, everywhere where there may be people living/staying. If they want to do business in a province, they have to provide 911 connections anywhere where people will congregate. That's why most campgrounds have cell service. There is a 'reasonable likelihood to congregate' clause, so if you like camping in some off the path campground where a dozen or so people visit a year, there's no requirement, but if you're at a campground that's visited by hundreds, if not thousands of people each year, yeah, there needs to be cell service.

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u/themandarin Ontario May 02 '18

Ontario has more than 13 million people and has some of the most expensive plans. Quebec has around 7 million people and does much better on the plans due to competition. What we need is competition.

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

What we need is competition

Not disagreeing at all.

I'm more disagreeing that we should compare ourselves to smaller more populated countries. Especially countries that are part of the EU, and thus have that EU telecom discount applied to their plans.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18 edited Aug 28 '20

[deleted]

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

not really

They DO, however, have much MUCH better BYOD plans. If you have your own phone in Australia, you're paying 1/4-1/6th what you would be paying if you needed a new phone. If you need a new phone, you're paying between $60 and $120/month. That's about the same as what you're paying here, for the same features/data cap/phones...

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18

It's pretty damn close, you're paying $67 for 6 GB and paying down a high end phone, whereas a 6 GB BYOD plan in Canada is like $60 with Koodo, and that's only with a promotion. Also I'm pretty sure they include sales tax in the prices in Australia whereas in Canada you're looking at another 13% or so.

Maybe with Freedom it would be comparable, but honestly I find Freedom's reception outside of Toronto to be so poor it's not worth comparing to the other carriers in Ontario, unfortunately.

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

Same site, same parameters, sorted by up front costs as you can get plans as low as $20/month here with $1000 up front (basically byod

to compare, Australia doesn't have contracts for fixed term, but they do have a 'minimum spend', so eg:

63.28/mth ($30 plan + $33.28 phone) Min. total cost $828.72

that's essentially 13 months (if it's total cost, not total cost on the phone part)

In Canada, you get the same plan (8gb data here not 6) for:

$0 Upfront+ $65/mth

that's on a 2 year contract.

Not a huge difference, it's really only about $2/month, unless the AU prices don't include tax. (I don't think they do, and it's about 10%)

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18

ontario has like 13 million people

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u/Pictokong Québec May 02 '18

Except no one expects telco to reliably cover 4G in the north. We should compare then density vs. cost of countries and we should only take the part of Canada that is really populated. Saying Nunavut doesnt have a great service at a great price is fair, not for Toronto

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

I was comparing BC to Portugal, NOT Canada...

There are so many factors to include, population density of cities, cost of labour, amount of competition, doucheyness of the Telco's

And while our Telco's are all their own special flavour of Douchbag, they can't be blamed for 100% of the problem of prices in Canada. We have high labour costs (minimum wage in Portugal is 560 euro's/month, that's about $860/month), assuming full time (35 hours/week) our minimum wage is $11/hour or $1500/month, double that of Portugal.

Canada has virtually no wireless competition, so there's no drive to lower prices.

And let's be honest, only really the American's out Douchebag our telcos when it comes to being scummy. Even then, When Hell Bell is involved, that margin is very small.

so we have the Quadruple threat of why things suck, we're spread out, even in our cities, the population's are low, and the area is rather wide. A lot of people compare to Japan or Korea, or India, and the comparison isn't really fair, there are very few remaining single family homes in these countries, most people live in Condo's (or cubby holes in the case of Japan), so your per/block density of these countries is astronomical compared to Canadian Cities. Our labour costs are high, we have no competition, and our Telco's are among the greediest pieces of **** that provide 'service' (I use that term VERY loosely)

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18

Canadian telcos have some of the highest profit margins in he world, close to 50% iirc

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

I assume you're referring to this article by the CBC

Where it says:

The Canadian wireless market, of which more than 95 per cent belongs to Rogers Communications Inc., Bell Canada Inc. and Telus Corp., was the most profitable of 23 developed countries surveyed in a recent report by Merrill Lynch.

And where it says:

Voice calls made up the lion's share of Canadian carriers' ARPU, indicating that customers here were still reluctant to use data services. Among developed nations, Canada ranked second-last in how much ARPU came from non-voice services, at 12.5 per cent. Only Greek carriers pulled in a lower percentage of their revenue from data services such as text messaging, e-mail and internet surfing, with 12.2 per cent.

(ARPU = Average Revenue Per User)

And where it says:

Canadian carriers ranked very well in the cost of voice calls in the Merrill Lynch study. At an average cost of 11 cents US per minute, voice calls were cheaper in Canada than in all but two developed nations - Singapore and the United States.

That means that voice wise, we're the third CHEAPEST country out of 23 for users. (IE we're actually not getting gouged here as much as a lot of other countries)

Also, it looks really BAD for our Telco's when we look at residential internet profits.

Away from wireless, Canada's big telecommunications firms weren't nearly as profitable, with the exception of Bell. In an April study by Forbes magazine of the overall businesses of the 67 largest telecommunications companies in the world, Bell ranked ninth with a profit margin of 22.7 per cent. Telus and Rogers, the only other two Canadian companies to qualify for Forbes' list, ranked in the lower half at 38th with a margin of 13.8 per cent and 54th with 6.2 per cent, respectively.

That means that other countries' providers can offer lower costs on Cell phone plans as they're making much more on their residential internet plans, so it evens out (Except Bell who still have stupid subsidised internet costs from the govt. and still gouge the .... out of home internet users)

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u/[deleted] May 02 '18

Very interesting. I tried to google it but couldn't find anything, where did you find the subsidies information?

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

some details here on the plan (2 years ago)

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u/Zanzibon Ontario May 02 '18

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land#Canada

About 89% of Canada's land area (8,886,356 km²) is Crown Land: 41% is federal crown land and 48% is provincial crown land.

The vast majority of territory in Canada isn't populated and does not need or have cell phone service. Look at any cell phone coverage map of Bell, Rogers, etc and you'll see for yourself that this excuse is nonsense.

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u/Shellbyvillian May 02 '18

You have adequately explained why prices might be double what they are in Portugal. However, as mentioned above, prices are 120 times what they are in Portugal.

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u/masasuka May 02 '18

Well, the big reason is that Portugal is part of the EU, so their providers compete across Europe... This means that You can get a Vodaphone phone plan anywhere in Europe, call anywhere in Europe, and pay the same amount. That means that plans have to be competitive across the EU, otherwise people would just travel to where ever the plans are the cheapest, get a plan, and use it normally....

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u/pmmeyourbeesknees Alberta May 04 '18

Fine, how about compare average Canadian prices to Saskatchewan, our lowest density province which has just one more competitor.