Huzzah! Rogers is getting bigger!

[FSTO]

The great Canadian love affair with monopolies seems to be continuing. But maybe the government is finally listening?

Competition Bureau to appeal tribunal decision allowing Rogers’s proposed Shaw takeover to proceed

Telecoms expressed disappointment that Competition Commissioner is appealing the decision and applying for an injunction

www.theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: Canadians should be wary of the rushed Rogers-Shaw decision

The federal government has a final opportunity to hold the cable conglomerate accountable for delivering value to Canadians - and should do so

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[Rifleman62]

How about Supply Management?

 

[Brad Sallows]

Telecomm is a natural monopoly, and bigger companies have bigger pockets for investing to roll out each successive generation of telecomm tech.

In other news, small hard-to-reach communities are bragging about starting their own small companies to provide internet services to their residents. "Doing it for themselves." Not really; buried in the stories will usually be at least a token one-sentence mention of "grants and subsidies". That means, "government funding". That means, a bit less money for health care and defence and...

People ought stop kidding themselves that there is some way we get 5G and beyond to everyone to the bandwidth targets set by governments without paying for it. The only question is how efficiently that is done. Governments can mobilize resources, but they rarely do so efficiently.

 

[CBH99]

A lack of competition has never resulted in the company that has the monopoly being motivated to do better.

It’s usually the direct opposite - no competition means no real drive to sway their customers to use you by providing exceptional customer service.


For ages now, the lack to competition in the telecommunication industry here in Canada has been a point of concern that citizens, government, and industry alike. And when the time comes for someone in power to say…

“no, we already have a lack of competition in this sector - you two big conglomerates can’t merge” or “sure, go ahead and merge, we want our citizens to have even less choice than they already do”

They choose the latter. Ofcourse. Because there isn’t any money illegally exchanging hands behind the scenes of this one



To simplify, Canada has 2 major airlines. WestJet & Air Canada.

We also have a small handful of smaller, cheaper options - all owned by the 2 big ones.

We can’t look at that and say “We have 10 airlines operating, it’s fine if 2 of them merge” if the 2 happen to be WestJet & Air Canada.



I hope the decision in regards to Rogers & Shaw is reversed, especially after Rogers crippled the country via their massive outage that left banks, 911 services, ATC services, and general telecommunications down for a day. (Oh wait, twice…)

 

[CBH99]

Telecomm is a natural monopoly, and bigger companies have bigger pockets for investing to roll out each successive generation of telecomm tech.

In other news, small hard-to-reach communities are bragging about starting their own small companies to provide internet services to their residents. "Doing it for themselves." Not really; buried in the stories will usually be at least a token one-sentence mention of "grants and subsidies". That means, "government funding". That means, a bit less money for health care and defence and...

People ought stop kidding themselves that there is some way we get 5G and beyond to everyone to the bandwidth targets set by governments without paying for it. The only question is how efficiently that is done. Governments can mobilize resources, but they rarely do so efficiently.

I know I risk sounding like a conspiracy theorist or truly apathetic (both apply, somewhat) but I don’t really care about 5G.

It doesn’t affect the average person all that much when it comes to their personal services - the benefit is with bigger applications.


(The other day I googled something on my phone. The search took 0.036 seconds for the results to show up. Why the heck do I need anything faster than that?)

 

[Brad Sallows]

A lack of competition has never resulted in the company that has the monopoly being motivated to do better.

It’s usually the direct opposite - no competition means no real drive to sway their customers to use you by providing exceptional customer service.

Yet Canada effectively has three major companies, each of which is a near-monopoly in its incumbency, and they keep rolling out the latest and greatest. Explanation?

 

[CBH99]

Yet Canada effectively has three major companies, each of which is a near-monopoly in its incumbency, and they keep rolling out the latest and greatest. Explanation?

Do they though?

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know much about the world of telecommunications. So I can probably guarantee you have far more knowledge in this area than I do.

But one thing we’ve all read about & seen on the news is how Canadians pay more for their cell phone plans than other people do in other western countries.

So how is even lesser competition going to improve that?



And what do they roll out that is the latest and greatest? (Genuine question, as maybe we’re talking about 2 different things?)

Because from how I’m looking at this, it’s Apple & Samsung that roll out the latest and greatest.

 

[FSTO]

There is a good podcast series on the Canada's Monopolistic Love Affair

Monopoly #4 - Teleconned

They’re the most hated companies in the country. And yet, they’re unavoidable.

www.canadaland.com

Ben Klass

The Proposed Rogers-Shaw Merger Exposes a Deeply Flawed Internet Access Model

Telecom giants are introducing themselves as the only solution to the myriad problems that they helped to create.

www.cigionline.org

Keldon Bester

Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project

www.antimonopoly.ca

 

[Retired AF Guy]

A lack of competition has never resulted in the company that has the monopoly being motivated to do better.

It’s usually the direct opposite - no competition means no real drive to sway their customers to use you by providing exceptional customer service.


For ages now, the lack to competition in the telecommunication industry here in Canada has been a point of concern that citizens, government, and industry alike. And when the time comes for someone in power to say…

“no, we already have a lack of competition in this sector - you two big conglomerates can’t merge” or “sure, go ahead and merge, we want our citizens to have even less choice than they already do”

They choose the latter. Ofcourse. Because there isn’t any money illegally exchanging hands behind the scenes of this one



To simplify, Canada has 2 major airlines. WestJet & Air Canada.

We also have a small handful of smaller, cheaper options - all owned by the 2 big ones.

We can’t look at that and say “We have 10 airlines operating, it’s fine if 2 of them merge” if the 2 happen to be WestJet & Air Canada.

And don't forget that the airports are owned by the Feds and those same Feds restrict the number of flights you can take to/from some foreign countries and restrict foreign carriers from flying within Canada.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Do they though?

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t know much about the world of telecommunications. So I can probably guarantee you have far more knowledge in this area than I do.

But one thing we’ve all read about & seen on the news is how Canadians pay more for their cell phone plans than other people do in other western countries.

So how is even lesser competition going to improve that?



And what do they roll out that is the latest and greatest? (Genuine question, as maybe we’re talking about 2 different things?)

Because from how I’m looking at this, it’s Apple & Samsung that roll out the latest and greatest.

"Canadians pay more" is a meaningless statement. Until someone does a deep dive into the costs and into where the profits from "pay more" are going (dividends, employee compensation, investments in new lines of business, re-investments in core business, paying down debt from prior rounds of investment, contingency savings, CEO's mattress) there is no viable argument to support the proposition that Canadians are "paying too much" (which is another way the accusation is sometimes expressed). The federal government wants costs down; the federal government also wants high-speed rolled out to all Canadians, regardless whether some subscribers could never pay back the cost of deploying and maintaining their share of the infrastructure to get the service to their points of use. Since cost-sharing measures (public/private) to expand services are already a matter of record, it's essentially certain that the true cost of relying on private companies alone to meet all government mandates/wishes would be greater than it is now. What is obvious without detailed breakdowns is that some Canadians are paying "more" (cost of private plans, and federal taxes) to subsidize other Canadians.

If critics are so certain that Canadians are overcharged, they must provide numbers breaking down what the costs are and where the revenues in excess of expenses are going. Before anyone wastes his time citing how "X is cheaper than Canada!", understand that comparisons of bottom-line sums are garbage without revealing all of the items which compose those sums. I'm not even sure all critics bother to account for the charges the Canadian government requires providers to collect on the Canadian government's behalf, which are among the world's highest (in the case of countries which have such charges).

Apple and Samsung aren't responsible for the "pipes" that carry the data, without which Apple and Samsung's latest and greatest are just expensive paperweights.

 

[CBH99]

"Canadians pay more" is a meaningless statement. Until someone does a deep dive into the costs and into where the profits from "pay more" are going (dividends, employee compensation, investments in new lines of business, re-investments in core business, paying down debt from prior rounds of investment, contingency savings, CEO's mattress) there is no viable argument to support the proposition that Canadians are "paying too much" (which is another way the accusation is sometimes expressed). The federal government wants costs down; the federal government also wants high-speed rolled out to all Canadians, regardless whether some subscribers could never pay back the cost of deploying and maintaining their share of the infrastructure to get the service to their points of use. Since cost-sharing measures (public/private) to expand services are already a matter of record, it's essentially certain that the true cost of relying on private companies alone to meet all government mandates/wishes would be greater than it is now. What is obvious without detailed breakdowns is that some Canadians are paying "more" (cost of private plans, and federal taxes) to subsidize other Canadians.

If critics are so certain that Canadians are overcharged, they must provide numbers breaking down what the costs are and where the revenues in excess of expenses are going. Before anyone wastes his time citing how "X is cheaper than Canada!", understand that comparisons of bottom-line sums are garbage without revealing all of the items which compose those sums. I'm not even sure all critics bother to account for the charges the Canadian government requires providers to collect on the Canadian government's behalf, which are among the world's highest (in the case of countries which have such charges).

Apple and Samsung aren't responsible for the "pipes" that carry the data, without which Apple and Samsung's latest and greatest are just expensive paperweights.

I'm glad you know way more than me, as what you wrote above brought a lot of things into the picture that I didn't know about before. (And still don't, but at least now I know a bit of what I don't know!)

So in your opinion, are these two giants merging a good thing, a bad thing, or doesn't matter as much as people may think it does, etc etc?

(Open question, curious as to what others' thoughts are on it?)

 

[lenaitch]

I don't know a whole lot about the industry, and certainly not defending big blue or big red, but my sense is our population density and distribution gets in the way of allowing costs that approach a lot of other countries. We have population density concentrated in a few areas that has to 'subsidize' the Rest of Canada; and, geographically, there is a lot of ROC. We have a potential ~15.3 Mn households to help pay for the cost to provide service to our Upper Rubberboot, while the the US has ~124 Mn to support their Buttcrack.

We use a third party ISP and used to use the Bell terrestrial network (DSL) but it was becoming increasingly clear that they were loosing interest in maintaining it. We were ok with DSL but the speed was degrading. We are now on the Rogers backbone, faster but more expensive. I get the sense that Bell would prefer all of their customers were wireless and it would be interesting to know what Rogers prefers. Wireless is great but not cheap and most often has data caps. On the one hand they don't have to run and maintain coax, but wireless towers aren't cheap and become more expensive the more remote it gets.

It will be interesting to see how much of a disruption Musk's Starlink will be. Speeds are great but it's not cheap and they don't yet have any TV packages.

Five G isn't really needed for most consumers with the exception of those who need the latest and greatest. Where it will have an impact is distributed infrastructure and services that rely on interconnectivity; autonomous vehicles come to mind. I'm not convinced we will see the normalization of AVs for at least a generation, but some industries like commercial transport will be eyeing it up, at least on some dense routes. It will interesting to see if they are willing to front the costs for the network, because 5G requires a lot of towers, Depending on the frequency, 5G towers max out at about 5km.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I'm glad you know way more than me, as what you wrote above brought a lot of things into the picture that I didn't know about before. (And still don't, but at least now I know a bit of what I don't know!)

So in your opinion, are these two giants merging a good thing, a bad thing, or doesn't matter as much as people may think it does, etc etc?

(Open question, curious as to what others' thoughts are on it?)

Shaw isn't a giant - Rogers, TELUS, and Bell each have far more subscribers - so the premise of the question is partly invalid. A pure guess is that it won't matter much. Read what the critics are writing - if the words "maybe", "might", "possibly" keep appearing, be skeptical of the claims.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Shaw out here used to be a great little company that did customer service quite well. Rogers never had that rep from anyone I know. Shaw has lost some of it's lustre over the years and lot of it's cable service that was the mainstay of it's business. We still use them for our internet.

 

[GK .Dundas]

With your next cell phone bill will it come with a packet of KY Jelly ?
Can't wait for the infrastructure problems to begin . It was bad enough when half the cell phone users in the country lost all service not to mention the banks.
There has been a tendency to under invest in infrastructure. Usually the most investment seems to happen after some sort of failure or collapse.

 

[dapaterson]

As a Freedom Mobile customer, I'm taking this as a win. With Videotron taking them over, their customer base grows to 3.6M, with coverage of essentially all the Windsor / Quebec City corridor plus pockets of AB and BC, they've got a better critical mass and are positioned to further expand and grow.

One of my lines is a legacy plan, where, for $45 monthly, it's de facto unlimited calling and texting all across Canada and the US, with unlimited data within their coverage area.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

One of my lines is a legacy plan, where, for $45 monthly, it's de facto unlimited calling and texting all across Canada and the US, with unlimited data within their coverage area.

I can bet they call you with offers to "upgrade" that plan.

 

[dapaterson]

Last time I went in for a "free" phone (with a 2 year "stay with us" commitment involved), the guy at the counter looked at the plan, looked at it again, and said "Never give that one up."

 

[Brad Sallows]

There has been a tendency to under invest in infrastructure. Usually the most investment seems to happen after some sort of failure or collapse.

Which company are you accusing of under-investment?

 

[lenaitch]

Last time I went in for a "free" phone (with a 2 year "stay with us" commitment involved), the guy at the counter looked at the plan, looked at it again, and said "Never give that one up."

We have two of those. No long distance but I get unlimited local voice and unlimited text (main use) for $24/mth.