by grownseed on 7/21/16, 6:47 PM with 17 comments
I've been living in Canada for a few years now, after having lived in several other countries. When I first arrived, I was shocked by how expensive phone/internet providers are, and as time went on, things only appeared to get worse.
Every now and then, I check "competing" offers only to find out that they essentially cost the same, sometimes in roundabout ways (confusing consumers with a myriad of options and such). To make matters worse, costs are actually going up. One such example was Shaw downgrading all of their offers (bandwidth, usage, etc.), while effectively hiking up their prices. Likewise, they'll increase the price of your existing package every so often, with absolutely no justification.
I've tried to get clarifications from various telcos, which went about as well as one might imagine. As many other people are, I'm convinced there is corporate collusion at play here, which is reinforced by the few oligopolies running the business. Despite repeated outrage over the years (a quick Google search for Canadian telco oligopolies/collusion will bring up tons of results), nothing has happened and things keep getting worse.
What resources are available to the general public to push this trend back? How would the kind people of HN address this situation in a constructive, realistic and effective manner?
Thank you!
by anonbanker on 7/21/16, 11:40 PM
Every time the price goes up, I send their CFO a bill for the yearly difference of my charges. After the second notice, when the CFO has defaulted and is now personally liable for a lien, I get a polite letter from someone else in the company saying that my bill has been "credited for mistaken charges."
When my bandwidth goes down, I bill them back for the adjusted bandwidth. same song and dance, and the bandwidth shoots up again after an "upgrade on your node was completed".
In short, I've had a 100Mbit connection with Shaw for 4 years now, with (almost) no outages for $70/month.
by jtcchan on 7/22/16, 4:30 AM
* CRTC http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/ * Competition Bureau http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/
Where complaints can be made re: competitive pricing and misleading advertisements.
See also: http://www.ipvancouverblog.com/canadiancompetitionlaw-abuseo...
Good luck!
by mthoms on 7/21/16, 10:09 PM
Openmedia is an advocacy group that is very active and has a handful of modest successes under its belt. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMedia.ca
Another good resource for keeping informed is through the site of law professor Michael Geist. I should note that his focus is a little more on copyright law. http://www.michaelgeist.ca
by mynameislegion on 7/22/16, 2:16 AM
http://www.lightspeed.ca/personal/ratesadsl.html#table
Cost comparison:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Edmonton/comments/4dtjt1/internet_s...
by andy9775 on 7/22/16, 2:43 AM
As for cell phones, it comes down to competition. I know that Saskatchewan as saskatel and the offerings from Rogers, Bell Telus used to be half of what you would pay on other provinces (haven't checked this lately).
by DKnoll on 7/21/16, 9:31 PM
I pay $79.99 CAD/month for 250Mb/20Mb with no data cap (I have pushed this to extremes, there is no hidden cap) from Rogers. I'm pretty happy with it.
Telecom has always been a cabal in Canada, predating the Internet. Good luck trying to change it.
by Spoom on 7/22/16, 4:04 PM
by PerfectElement on 7/22/16, 3:06 AM
by fmilne on 7/22/16, 2:53 AM
by grownseed on 7/22/16, 4:14 PM
Some people mentioned OpenMedia, who happen to be based in Vancouver where I am, so I'm planning on giving them a shout soon.
As for the CRTC, I spent a bit of time looking them up and I have to admit it didn't make me feel particularly confident in their ability to make anything happen. That said, I'm happy to be proven wrong.
Again, thank you all, I'm hopeful something can be done.
by spoonie on 7/24/16, 2:43 AM