Canadians are still paying too much for telecom services, the industry minister said Thursday, one day after Rogers Communications said it was raising the cost of some of its wireless phone plans.
“Let’s be clear, while some progress has been made to lower prices, Canadians still pay too much and see too little competition,” Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement to CBC News.
Nearly two dozen “enforceable” conditions were attached to Rogers’s merger with Shaw Communications, including reducing costs for customers, when Champagne announced the deal’s approval in 2023.
The hikes can be viewed as a sort of “disciplinary intervention,” said Vass Bednar, executive director of the Master of Public Policy program at McMaster University in Hamilton.
She told CBC News the telecom companies may want to push customers “that have chosen to have more freedom with their contracts” to lock into a plan in order to avoid the price increase.
The three major wireless providers — Rogers, Bell and Telus — own and operate the physical infrastructure and rent it out to smaller companies that may offer cheaper options.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Canadians are still paying too much for telecom services, the industry minister said Thursday, one day after Rogers Communications said it was raising the cost of some of its wireless phone plans.
“Let’s be clear, while some progress has been made to lower prices, Canadians still pay too much and see too little competition,” Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement to CBC News.
Nearly two dozen “enforceable” conditions were attached to Rogers’s merger with Shaw Communications, including reducing costs for customers, when Champagne announced the deal’s approval in 2023.
The hikes can be viewed as a sort of “disciplinary intervention,” said Vass Bednar, executive director of the Master of Public Policy program at McMaster University in Hamilton.
She told CBC News the telecom companies may want to push customers “that have chosen to have more freedom with their contracts” to lock into a plan in order to avoid the price increase.
The three major wireless providers — Rogers, Bell and Telus — own and operate the physical infrastructure and rent it out to smaller companies that may offer cheaper options.
The original article contains 468 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!