Oh man, we really need this for telecom too. And even more important than their collusion is their political corruption, so the government protects them from competition and funnels endless billions in taxpayer money to them.
You know what actually works great for reducing the price of cell plans in Canada is a public option.
There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line.
Manitobans should be absolutely up in arms over the privatization of Manitoba Telecom.
Canada has a ton of land and just not that many people. There's 3 + Videotron major telecom operators servicing a population the size of California spread out over a land area the size of the United States. The Capex and payback period for spinning up a new, competitive, national carrier is wild (there's a pile of bodies there proving my point) which makes this a perfect job for the government.
(Not all were economic failures: you can also be a successful and scrappy going concern and that gets you acquired by bigger pockets with a rubber stamp from government that thinks bigger firms are better for all)
Not by definition but by the nature of the incentives.
They face a lot less monetary risks and people are harder to fire. Not to mention the additional bureaucracy and administrative weight due to the additional laws and regulations that apply to public services and how being a part of the state means facing more administrators and bureaucrats.
> Canada Post is certainly not cheap for the type and quality of service that's provided.
Can you pay less to send something via UPS or FedEx? I'm pretty sure you can't. Remember Purolator is a Canada Post subsidiary so probably don't count them.
I'm not sure. But I also don't consider Canada Post to be offering comparable service to FedEx and UPS these days, too.
For example, based on my experience and the experiences of other people in Canada I've talked to, Canada Post seems to just deliver a pick-up notice slip, rather than the parcel itself.
It's particularly annoying when the recipient has been available to receive the parcel, but Canada Post doesn't even appear to make an attempt to deliver, although the slip is left behind.
The recipient then has to go down to a Canada Post outlet with the slip to actually receive the parcel.
On the other hand, FedEx, UPS, and other private sector (I, too, would exclude Purolator) couriers consistently manage to deliver parcels directly to me, right into my hands, even if it might occasionally take a second attempt. I haven't had to go to a UPS or FedEx depot in well over a decade.
In my opinion, delivering a parcel directly to the recipient is a different service than delivering the parcel to the same city and then requiring the recipient to complete the job.
>There's one province where people pay roughly half the national average for all there telecom needs - and that's Saskatchewan. SaskTel's mere existence keeps all the majors in line.
Source? Looking at sasktel's website and rogers' website, this claim does not pass the sniff test. Their "basic" plan is $60/month (BYOD) for 15GB of data, whereas rogers gives you 75GB for $65. Even if you don't use 15GB of data and that extra $5 brings you no benefit, the price difference is nowhere near high enough to justify the claim "people pay roughly half the national average".
My takeaway from that is that Sasktel/MTS were much cheaper for a comparable plan, but the average revenue per user is near-identical - so the effect is mostly just that Sasktel/MTS users got more data with their plans. (Which tracks to me, if you halved the revenue of a provincial-scale carrier, they'd be a huge money loser regardless of how many executive salaries got cut or efficiencies got discovered.)
Probably marketing/promos for new customers vs. actual realized, and I strongly suspect if you click through those Rogers plans you'll land on a much higher total cost.
I looked again after your response, the Rogers plans all state "for new customers only" which is probably the discrepancy. Every time I speak with my parents I'm shocked how much they're paying and I have to spend an hour renegotiating.
I live in Saskatchewan and pay ~50$ for 10GB of data/month. I'm not on a Sasktel plan, as I found a cheaper option through one of the privatized networks, however Sasktel has a new subsidiary: Lum Mobile, to compete with the cheap plans like what I'm using. I know someone who has some discount at Sasktel and pays ~50$/month for 75GB(!) of data.
When I was in toronto the guy at the hotel had a 306 (saskatchewan) phone number because it was cheaper.
Sasktel is a great provider. I have fiber to the home in my house, for instance.
