Telecoms in Canada: Patriotic but pricey

DIRE warnings have been sounded in Canada’s press about an imminent foreign invasion, aided by the treachery of the government. A thundering article in the Toronto Star compared Stephen Harper, the prime minister, to Benedict Arnold, a general who switched sides to fight for the British during the United States’ war of independence. Mr Harper’s offence—“[betraying] the interests of his country for a foreign power”, as the Star put it—was to try to tempt a foreign mobile-phone operator to come to Canada. Quite what Canadians have to fear from more competition in their pricey phone market is unclear.The government is planning an auction in January of 700-megahertz spectrum, for which bidders must register by September 17th. The local “big three” providers—Bell, Rogers and Telus, which between them control 90% of the mobile market—can each bid for one of four blocks of spectrum available in all of Canada’s 14 service regions. Other firms can buy up to two blocks each. Unlike the big three, newcomers are also free to snap up the handful of ailing operators that opened shop when the government tried to encourage more competition in the industry in 2008.This has irked the big three, which dominate broadband and pay-television as well as telephony. The companies have run a publicity campaign against what they say amounts to...



via The Economist: The Americas http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21584991-bid-inject-foreign-competition-cosy-local-industry-falters-patriotic-pricey?fsrc=rss%7Came