Will the crisis involving Rogers help revive the debate on the cartel that governs our telecommunications in Canada? In addition to paying more than almost everywhere in the world for our mobile phone plans, we realize that this concentration in the hands of essentially three or four economic agents makes us vulnerable to monster service failures. We are really swimming against the current of the famous “resilience”, which is very fashionable at the various levels of government and a fortiori at the municipal level.
It affects everyone, even if you have never been a direct customer of Rogers. Friday, Interac was not working, OC Transpo and several municipal or provincial services were unavailable in Ottawa and Gatineau, The Weeknd canceled its show in Toronto. And in Montreal, essential services like 311 and the Court of Quebec were unable to function. In Quebec, the àVélo electrically assisted bicycle sharing system, the equivalent of the Bixi in the Capitale-Nationale, was out of service. What do we do and how do we get out of it?
One might be tempted to believe that with the mere arrival of new suppliers, competition would cause prices to drop for consumers, that operators would (finally) invest in infrastructure, especially in rural areas. This is what Stephen Harper tried almost 10 years ago, in 2013. He recognized the oligopolistic nature of our telecoms industry and chose the American Verizon to come and break or dilute the “Big Three (Bell-Telus-Rogers).
The initiative came halfway through a Conservative mandate that was looking for direction. It was the subject of a grouped fire from the Canadian operators. Lobbying and public communications fiercely opposed it, and Verizon finally decided not to be charmed by the Harper government. Probably the initial implementation cost was not worth the war the operators were threatening to unleash.
One might also think that simply asking the companies to lower their prices could have done the trick. It’s a bit like the plan of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who in 2020 mandated Industry Minister Navdeep Bains to order companies to cut 2GB and 6GB packages by 25% over two years. . They also promised easier entry into the Canadian market for potential new and/or small suppliers, as well as reduced initial investment.
It remains to be seen what will become of it, but, personally, I already know that I am still paying too much for my plan, especially when I compare it to those of French friends who pay 25 to 30 euros for a plan with unlimited data. . It seems to me that it is time to think collectively about the need to dismantle this cartel through antitrust laws. We could include Videotron-Quebecor in this reflection. Firstly because it is Bell’s biggest competitor here, but also because we like to do everything in doubles in Quebec. We cannot ignore the company’s hold on cable distribution in Quebec, as well as its incredible weight in the media ecosystem with its some sixty newspapers, twenty magazines and ten publishing houses, including VAT Group.
All members of the Big Three are also in production (eg Bell with Noovo), also hold publications, so one feels that it becomes almost impossible for journalists and other known media personalities working for these big groups to criticize the situation. They never address the issue publicly.
We have already discussed (albeit timidly) the impact of a highly concentrated telecommunications and cultural industry from the angle of the consumer and from the point of view of the diversity of opinions in the public space, but the Rogers crisis shows us that we must not overlook the security risk of seeing a handful of large groups owning most of our telecommunications infrastructure.