The federal government appears fed up with the multimillion-dollar advertising campaign by Telus, Bell, & Rogers, attacking Ottawa's strategy to attract foreign telecommunications companies.
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, [James] Moore compared Canada's wireless players to North American auto makers of decades past that faced a wave of foreign competitors. "I am quite certain that in the 1980s, Chrysler and GM and Ford were making arguments that we don't need Hondas and we don't need Toyotas and we don't need BMWs, we don't need Audis in Canada," he said in an interview. "I think more competition has served us very well in the auto sector."
As expected, the usual suspects disagree with the Tories and tacitly or explicitly support the Big Three.
Update: Here's a well written piece by Ben Klass, providing an historical perspective on the matter.
Seems strange to me that if Moore feels that way then why did the CPC buy a chunk of GM to bail them out? Ontario and Quebec have rode the AutoPact gravy train for decades.
Now it appears the CPC is prepared to submarine 3 well ran Canadian companies to subsidize Verizon which has a bigger capitalization than the whole industry in Canada combined. Oh, I forgot that the Verizon is coming to give Canadians a hand up not to make a profit.
Perhaps Canadians should consider the size versus population of Canada and then the quality of their networks compared to the USA. Our we going to drop a pants once again so that we can be high graded?
The question is who should the government run the country for, 3 telecommunications firms or 30 million+ citizens who are their customers?
As one of those citizens, I want increased competition in the marketplace which results in more choice and lower costs.
Foreign competition in the Canadian cellular market? I'll take it! Even if rates didn't drop that much, I'd be delighted if I could cross the border into the USA, and not incur roaming charges.
The 3 Telcos have banded together on a desparate "multi million $" campaign to stop whatever change the conservatives proposed.
These are the same three companies that opposed number portability and every other sensible competition building effort. They want Canadians to remain the highest paying telecom consumers in the world.
It is desperation on the part of the Telcos. Good on James Moore (my MP) and the Conservatives for taking this on to benefit all telecom consumers.
When I first saw the Telco's full page ad in the NP, I wondered what their Return On Investment (ROI) was for them. There is no part of their investment that benefits consumers. They are only protecting their turf (exorbitant profit). They keep crying wolf and Conservative keep pushing ahead for the benefit of all Canadians.
http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/08/15/telco-campaign-passes-off-u-s-models-as-concerned-canadians/
The telco's are using foreign actors and standard photo shots from U.S. companies for their representation of "ordinary Canadians" concerned about telcom competition.
Does Canada have more monopolies than any other Country in this Free Trade world,or does it just seem that way?
The last time the Telcos and their Unions blathered so vigorously, I was living large in Ontario with a monthly long distance slap invariably exceeding $200 per month.
Scary competition soon reduced said charges to all you can reach for $20 Canadian pesos per month. And now of course it is nearly free, if not so.
I have continued on my merry long distance charge free life by being excessively generous to all street people, assuming their ranks were greatly swelled by Telco shareholders and employees. Mea culpa.
When business and unions are in agreement, chances are you are paying for it.
I agree with Moore's point about competition yet remember quite well that when push came to votes the CINO CPC bailed out Chrysler and GM.
for U good folks that compare Telcos with auto ind., that like comparing bananas to turd (septic) tanks
as to telcos, Rodgers and bell ain't learned what customer service really entails, so I have NO sympathy for them
It says something quite vile about our three telecom pigs that we have to hope for a firm like Verizon - hardly a customer-friendly firm - to enter our telecom marketplace and try to create a little real competition.
I think Bell is far & away the worst of the pigs, but that's not saying much. All three of them have had it too cozy for too long and need a good hard competitive slap applied to their heads.
Ah, someone seems to have a basic misunderstanding of what happened in the US auto industry.
The Big 3 and their friends in government made SUVs and large pickup trucks their profit centres
through various taxation loopholes for "self employed buyers", etc., and left their car business to rot.
Then the economy tanked and SUV people panicked and bought Japanese and Korean car value, speeding up the
inevitable go bust of GM and Chrysler.
Canadian cell phone companies take the opportunity, every time someone buys a phone, to neglect a $ 5.00 fee that saves hundreds or thousands of dollars in fees. Telus might know that it is unlikely that Mrs. Murphy would spend $ 10,000.00 calling Somalia but instead of helping customers they go to heroic ends trying to collect. In my opinion Canadian cellphone companies are a fraudulent oligarchy.
They've made it easy for you!
http://www.fairforcanada.ca/?utm_source=GLOBEANDMAIL_COM_300x250_G_M_PoliticsEN_CPM&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=LevelPlayingField_Cameron_300x250_eng_v1&utm_campaign=2013_LPF#contact
After reading Kate's link, I decided to click on one of the banner ads. What I found was another delightfully whiney (yet customizable!) form e-mail which gets sent to the minister of industry, the PMO, and your local MP. I didn't create a hyperlink because sometimes when I do, my comments don't get posted for some reason. My letter below:
Dear Mark Warawa,
The idiots sending this form e-mail used an ad which claimed that "thousands of jobs were going to be lost", all the while apparently ignoring their hypocrisy by outsourcing their call centers to India or Bangladesh. We have been skewered by the Canadian cell providers acting as a cartel for so long that we're pleased the Hon. James Moore has finally done something deserving of the Conservative label which he used to get elected many years ago, namely standing up for conservative principles - which he never once did in all the years he supported the CBC.
I used to work for an American parent company who lamented every time they got their Canadian cell bill, complaining that mine was five times the size of everyone else's in the company. The truth? Canadians were being charged 14,000% on data - as much as the market would bear - at the time, and we're still being overcharged simply because these companies have colluded to the extent that there's no genuine, unfettered competition going on.
Private sector enterprises will always maximise their revenue and profits by taking maximum advantage of the laws on the books. I strongly suggest you continue with your plans, ignore the bleating of those who claim they're worried about competition (all the while seemingly unaware of the incredible irony of blocking Ting from access to their networks), and encourage these companies to continue to maximise their revenue and profits while learning how to be competitive in a global market...the same way Ontarians need to learn how to be competitive with a still-undervalued dollar without complaining that their exports aren't selling.
It's time for Canadian businesses to grow up. Thanks for finally figuratively kicking some of them out from the basement where they can learn what it takes to stand on their own.
I'll follow up with you to ensure that this message actually got through. If it doesn't, I'll be sure to let the media know that this is yet another very dishonest and extremely disrespectful attempt to lobby the government while using taxpayers (and customers) as pawns in their corporate temper tantrum.
Gen. Lee Wright
P.S. Below is what they wanted to send. I'm leaving it in for comedy's sake. Enjoy!
Damned good letter,Gen.Wright! I hope Warawa pays attention to it.
And after this war is over,it's time to take on the cable monopoly,and their odious "bundling" charges. Currently, with Shaw,I have to buy about a hundred channels to get the dozen or so I want.
Just checked Telus, they're just as bad.
"It's time for Canadian businesses to grow up."
Absolutely.
People are dreaming if they think that Verizon would actually bring U.S. rates to Canada.
The telcos aren't overtly trying to keep Verizon out; they want the same right to bid on the valuable spectrum blocks that Verizon will have. The CRTC forced the telcos to provide (unprofitable) cellular service to $hit Creek, Ala and gave the little guys the right to piggyback on those facilities at very favourable rates. Verizon will retain that same right through their sub(s)...which is silly given that Verizon is big enough to buy BCE, Rogers or Telus before lunch.
My guess is that even if Verizon is successful that people in 2 years will be saying same $hit, different day.
to submarine 3 well ran Canadian companies to subsidize Verizon
How are the Cdn firms being "submarined"? How is Verizon being "subsidized"?
Let me try ask a few more Yes/No questions, CT, that you might get your pointy little around:
Is there one penny in extra costs foisted on the Three Amigos? (Hint: No)
Is Ottawa giving one penny to Verizon? (Hint: No).
I have a plan with Wind Mobile. Their coverage is spotty, and it costs me a lot to use the phone if I'm out of my home area. But I don't travel much, and I don't really need a phone when I do. For $30/month, I get:
UNLIMITED IN AND OUT CALLING IN MY AREA
UNLIMITED TEXT
UNLIMITED DATA
What does $30/month get me from Fido? 100 minutes of daytime talk, unlimited nights and weekends and text, NO DATA
From Bell? No $30/month plan, but for $70, I can get unlimited talk and text, 250 MB of data.
From Telus? No $30/month plan, but for $35, I get unlimited talk and text, and for another $15, 250 MB of data.
From Rogers? $60/month gets me unlimited talk and text and.. 200 MB of data (although they're doubling that on a current promotion
Wind's deal is clearly better for me, and nothing above comes close to it.
So, for the Three Amigos to pretend that they're offering competitive products is ridiculous. They depend on inertia to keep most of their customers, and the fact that it will take other operators years to build out their networks. They are hoping that Wind, and Mobilicity, and Public Mobile will all go bankrupt, which is another reason the Three Amigos are against any foreign investment in these firms.
As Moore said, the Three Amigos are trying to protect their profits and their turf, which is what all companies do. Too bad they aren't using the millions they spend on advertising on to create savings for their customers.
I say all this after having worked for Rogers Wireless in Marketing. I understand their desire to maximize profit, and I'm all for it, so long as they do it by offering better products and services, and not using half-baked patriotism and misleading arguments to prevent competition.
Two final points: the Three Amigos' ads talk about Verizon "piggy-backing" on their networks. Just as in competitive long distance - where I also worked - the newcomers RENT space on the incumbents' networks, which is presumably priced to give them a profit. The idea that Bell/Telus/Rogers is giving away time and space on their networks for free is laughable.
And, I probably should have said "a nickel" rather than "a penny", but old habits die hard.
Geezus, what a stupid assessment of what happened in autos.
You seem unaware that in the early 1970's, the Justice Department was considering an anti-trust suit against GM, as they controlled "too much" of the domestic market. GM bought labour peace with a high-priced union contract in 1970, after a 67-day strike. The figuring at the time was that the UAW would use that as a template for Ford, Chrysler, and American Motors, none of which were as profitable as GM, and so it would hurt their competitors more than it hurt them. First mistake.
Then came the 1973 oil embargo. Gas lines and soaring prices made many people look at smaller cars for the first time. Since Detroit made much more money on big cars, they had left the small car market to VW and the Japanese. Oops. Second mistake.
Detroit had a bean-counter mentality - if they could save a nickel on a part that went into 2 million cars a year, that's another $100k in pure profit. The idea of letting workers stop the line when they saw a quality problem was unthinkable, especially given the adversarial relationship between unions and management. Meanwhile, the Japanese, implementing the quality control programs of an American engineer, Deming, were producing better and better cars each year. Third mistake.
This was all years before SUV's were on the scene, and pickup trucks were used by people who NEEDED them, not urban cowboys trying to show off to their girlfriends. (e.g. my pencil neck former landlord, who works on a computer each day, doesn't drive out of Toronto except on 400 series highways, and doesn't need to haul anything larger than his cat, but drives around in a gas-guzzling F-150. I have no problem with farmers, construction workers, etc. who need pickups to do real work.) So to suggest their demise was in any way related to trends that started 15-20 years after the rot set in is ridiculousness.
By the mid-80's, the Japanese had excellent quality cars available, the stigma of driving foreign cars was gone, and Detroit was STILL not producing a decent compact car. (Gremlin? Vega? hahahahahaha...) They had a strong foothold in the market, and Detroit was never going to recaputre its former glory.
KevinB
actually the 1973 "crisis" caused ppl to get rid of their 2 midsize cars and go to 1 big car in many cases, this allowed the big 3 to struggle through and sunk American motors, who produced small and midsized only. But you are rite that quality became a factor, but only in the end of the 80Ts and into the 90Ts, before that they were "rice junk". Another factor was that the 3 bigs liked to stretch their technology advances, rather than gradual improvements, this was called "engineering by been counters", and so the Japanese jumped ahead of them technologically
Let us see now.
Chinese communists take over Canadian oil producer ….. sounds cool don’it (sic)?
American company wants to get into the market in Canada to compete with three Canadian companies.
Not cool.
How so?
Subsidy? Can somebody explain that …… is it some kind of a stretch?
Sort of corporate lawyer’s double talk ….. for low information people that don’t look past the talking point?
Lev:
For Bay Street, selling communists the bullets to shoot us with at knockdown prices means easy profit today and making the connections they'll need to start over in Hong Kong or Shanghai tomorrow.
Foreign competition for cellphone service means writing off their investments in Bell, Rogers and Telus bonds and stocks. Losing money is not something Bay Street will stand for if it has a choice. Only peasants pay taxes, only peasants die in wars, and only peasants lose money.
If entry to the Canadian telecom market were truly free and our telecom firms were forced to charge US rates, they'd be in bankruptcy court in a matter of months. Bell, Rogers and Telus know that very well, and so do their creditors. They "invested" plenty of money in the Liberal Party of Canada over the years to ensure nothing of the sort would ever happen.
Essentially, they refuse to believe the awful truth that the value of their "investment" in the Libranos has fallen to zero, eating up their real net worth several times over, and that our telecom firms' following the enemies of the Queen that they bankrolled generously over the years into the dustbin of Canadian history will be the result of poetic justice, not "unfair competition."
The ad campaign is dishonest. I think most canadians realize this. Do Bell and Rogers think we look them as benevolent forces for good? Sure they built the infrastructure, but they did it to make money- loads of it. When they have the opportunity to provide jobs to canadians they ship them overseas. When I had a problem with my phone yesterday, I chatted with a very polite gal from somewhere in southeast asia. If they were sincere, I would be talking to a gal from say, Moncton.
Does anybody remember when about two years ago, the same two companies (Bell/Roger) tried to get the CRTC to regulate Netflix? Its all about protecting their turf- not protecting the interests of canadians.
I welcome competition in our wireless business. Verizon will show them how it is done and rates will come down.
Next up CPC (please) the airlines. I am tired of paying a fortune to fly to Vancouver while be treated like a head of cattle on a rail car.
Kevin
Can you try, for a moment, to connect the dots?
Wind is charging $30/month of unlimited use..................and bleeding millions of dollars in debt, on the verge of bankruptcy.
There's lots of reasons to deride the telcos, namely poor customer service, outsourcing to Inja, etc, but, don't mistake the telcos for the CRTC rules and regulations. The CRTC is as much to blame for the current state of affairs as any.
That bundling of stations we all hate? Yup, CRTC.....some of it Cancon, but some of it is also driven by the networks. "You want our Disney channel? Sure, you have to take schlock 1, schlock 2, wymyns network, etc, or else you don't get Disney".....
Unfortunately, with this situation, the truth is the first casualty. I would prefer the conservatives save their ammo for a real adversary, like Trudeau and the Liberals, instead of wasting resources tilting at windmills. Instead, we have a situation where Verizon is now delaying decisions, largely based upon an interfering, adversarial government upon the Telco industry. The conservatives, instead of being silent, are being very reactionary, which is a bit unusual, given their past strategy of being cool, calm, and collected.
There's just something that stinks about a "pro-business" government, attacking Big Business....is this the same James Moore that waxed eloquent about the CBC not too long ago?
This is Air Canada all over again. I wish the big three would all go and drown, and I wish their CEOs would be thrown into a tank full of hungry sharks. Currently travelling in the US, and even with a so-called US travel plan my cell phone data rates are **ridiculous**!! Daylight robbery, there is no other way to describe it.
I have ZERO sympathy for Canadian cell phone companies. None. Zip. Nada. Been ripped off so many times over the years I have lost track. They can all go to *hell* without passing go. All they know how to do is rob Canadians of their hard earned money. They have no morals whatsoever, and competition scares the living hell out of them because it would force them to actually *serve* their customers, rather than treating their customers as bottomless bank accounts that they can rob from.
Their ad campaign is as despicable as it is dishonest. As I said, these slime bags have no morals whatsoever. They lie with ease in an attempt to prevent real competition. They can all rot at the bottom of a sewer. Good for the Cons for stirring the pot. We have seen this movie many times in Canada before.
TJ
It is NOT a free market.
The gubmint sets the rules via the CRTC
The gubmint is, voila, the "conservatives". They have the power to cahnge the CRTC and the RULES, but they are not, inst5ead being cowrds and simply playing a wasteful PR campaign, that will change nothing. They are running against themselves.
You don't like the companies, fine, there's lots of reasons not to, but your rant is something right out of leftwing rabble. They are private companies, NOT government. Your rant sounds like the government should be in the telecom business, being all things to all people.
You have the right NOT to own a cell phone. Remember that.
Its the government that prevents REAL COMPETITION. Thru the CRTC. I should know, its my day job.
Like I said, if anybody wants an ADULT conversation, let's have it. But you are not getting the WHOLE STORY from James Moore, far from it. Just spin. He's a politician, and they all lie for a living.