[pj_mukh]

Curious though what the government could do about this pricing scheme here? Seems like the solution is to setup a bureaucracy to watch pricing and then micro-manage the situation whenever its tried?

The ride-hailing services pulled this in various places around the world. Airlines in Canada did it as well. Feels like whack-a-mole.

[Sanzig]

The most straightforward solution would be to require the telecoms submit pricing tables to the regulator and force them to stick to them. If they want to make a change, they have to do it for the whole region, not just the area where small-time competitors have installed new service.

Price transparency in general is a huge issue with Canadian telecoms, it's well known that it's a "complaint based system" with the big three. They'll hook you with an introductory rate and then start jacking up the prices after a year or two. The usual dance is you go to one of the other big telecoms and get a quote for their introductory rate, and then go back to yours and threaten to leave unless it's matched. It's a pretty awful system that requires people to know how to navigate it. Most don't, so after their intro period expires they just get gouged. My father in law is paying almost $200 a month for internet and TV.

[nabaraz]

Promote fair competition.

Verizon tried to get in Canadian market in 2019ish but top three telecom formed a mafia and didn't let that happen. Same thing with Delta, would be a much better alternative to Air Canada.

[randomdata]

Verizon was already in the Canadian market once before, holding a sizeable stake in Telus. I would say that they, along with AT&T owning a stake in Rogers during the same period, and of course AT&T also establishing Bell Canada earlier, are responsible for the present state of telecom in Canada. There were a number of other players who were trying to compete, but is wasn't easy going up against the offspring of the American behemoths.

[seized]

Air Canada isn't perfect but Delta is junk. I have flown on both many times.

Many counties have their own airline. Canada shouldn't automatically give up our airline in favor of a US one, because the US one wants in.

[barkingcat]

the government is the reason there is such a triopoly - Bell/Telus/Rogers is a triopoly set up and supported by the government itself. The CRTC last mile service rule (forcing the triopoly to let other vendors use their physical cabling) is the only thing holding back a complete closed market.

[8jef]

In Canada, the entire public apparatus (federal and provincial at least) is geared toward keeping big businesses alive and happy, no matter the costs, because that means keeping jobs, because people with jobs paying taxes is the only meaningful source of revenue for governments since corporations can evade most taxation.

So, the various Canadian governments will do whatever they can to maintain corporate status quo and keep the money flowing. That's how it works. Just please big players and the rest follows.

Then, don't expect too much. Canada has never been a real country, its people never decided to take over and govern themselves, it's just an ex-British colonial body from a bygone era (one of many), and has always been acting as such.

Because of that, it's also one of the few places in the world where true personal and community freedom can be achieved, probably because it's so harsh and so vast and so highly dysfunctional and so challenging and so unimportant. Whatever it is, it's nice to be a Canadian for the most part. I'm not proud of being one, but I don't have to be, and that works pretty well for me.

[kalleboo]

One thing some other countries have done is break up the old monopolies into a last mile company that owns all the copper/fiber vs a services company.

[ryanbrunner]

Acknowledge that internet / phone service works much better as a utility and nationalize or highly regulate (i.e. fixed pricing schemes) the telecom companies.

[II2II]

The CRTC does dictate a fixed pricing scheme for mobile phones:

https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/phone/mobile/occa.htm

Near the bottom it states that those companies are supposed to promote those plans. They didn't the last time I tried looking them up. Regulation is meaningless if there is a lack of enforcement.

(Note: I'm not saying that the pricing scheme is particularly good since it leaves the needs of many people unaddressed. On the other hand, it does address the needs of those who would have the most trouble affording phone service.)

Also consider the continual battle of third-party ISPs to provide affordable Internet access. The CRTC says the major providers have to lease out their lines and stipulate what those rates are. On the other hand, those third-party ISPs are constantly fighting to keep the rates low and are pretty much tied to providing service levels that match the major providers.

[patmcc]

I thought I'd dive in and look for these plans, and as expected they're not at all easy to find.

For Telus, I had to go to four different plan/pricing pages before I found a link mentioning that cheaper plans are only available on Koodo (their lower priced brand). And then, the $35 plan is as lousy as they can make it and still comply with the CRTC - 3GB of data at 3G (only 2 generations ago, awesome) speeds, with overage costs of $13/100MB. Just absurdly bad. Or maybe you want something more reasonable, let's cut out that data access, you just want talk and text? That'll save you a whopping $3, at $32/month.

So that's the telecom situation in Canada; the first 3GB cost you $3, the next 3GB cost you $390.

[oliwary]

Maybe re-examine the foreign ownership rules for telecommunications companies...

"As it stands now, foreign ownership of a telecommunications company is limited to no more than 20 per cent of a company’s voting shares and no more than 33.3 per cent of the voting shares of a carrier’s holding company, and an effective total limit of 46.7 per cent (as long as the foreign entity doesn’t have control). On top of that, at least 80 per cent of the board members must be Canadian citizens." [0]

(Although seems not to apply to small actors under 10 percent of the market share anymore)

[0] https://financialpost.com/telecom/tight-reins-leaves-our-tel...

[ipaddr]

The idea around the foreign ownership laws is to prevent jobs and knowledge from leaving the country hopefully creating entities that can compete at the global level. It has worked with banking but failed with internet providers. It costs regular citizens but not strategically doing this is costly.

The industry is large/stable enough to allow 100% foreign ownership.

[bawolff]

Its already illegal if its foreign physical goods that are being imported (https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/sima-lmsi/brochure-eng.html ). I guess they could extend that.