Study calls for more competition in cellphone market

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A telecommunications study is calling for more competition in the cellphone market. Its promoting two controversial ideas not likely to be popular among the “Big Three” Canadian service providers.

The Seaboard Group says regulatory changes that brought more competition into the Canadian market in recent years have had a positive impact.

“…Better customer service, more customer focus, the carriers are no longer treating their customers as gold mines,” said Iain Grant with the Seaboard Group, a strategic consulting firm in the telecommunications sector. “They’re trying to be nice to you.”

“[The big three service providers] haven’t done much to their core brands,” he explained. “The products you would get from Telus, or Bell, or Rogers, under contract, are essentially the same products as you used to have. But all of those companies have launched alternate brands who are imitating the new entrants with fresher and better services.

“The dreaded Canadian invention of the System Access Fee, for example, isn’t tacked on to a Mobilicity plan, or a Wind plan, or even a Koodo plan. I think that’s an important thing to remember.”

He said the majority of Canadians are still locked into contracts with the Big Three, and paying more than they should.

“That’s why we urge the government to continue their push for more competition,” Grant said.

He says there are two ways the feds can achieve this goal. The first is opening the Canadian wireless market to foreign investors, which is something the federal government has resisted doing so far.

“We can also give them some of the new spectrum, which we are about to offer to wireless carriers,” he explained.

Sometime in the next few weeks — possibly as early as next month — the federal government is expected to auction the rights to new wireless bandwidth in the 700 MHz spectrum.

“The new spectrum is the ‘beach-front property’ of the wireless world,” said Grant. “It travels much further than existing signals and it goes through everything, like underground parking lots.”

He suggested that the Big Three should be excluded from that upcoming auction in favour of new competitors that want to enter the Canadian wireless market.

“They need that leg up, and we are urging the government to give them that,” he said.

He said exclusion of the Big Three from the spectrum auction would not be without precedent, as governments in France and the UK have made similar moves in order to break the stranglehold national carriers have enjoyed for years in those markets.

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