Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, congratulated himself on Friday for having fulfilled his commitment to reduce the wireless bills of Canadians by 25% three months more sooner than expected. However, if the price of certain services has fallen, the amount at the bottom of the invoice has not decreased, notes an expert in the sector.
“Basically, the amount paid by the average customer of wireless providers has not decreased between 2020 and today, since their needs have changed and the devices are more expensive,” says Nadir Marcos Mechaiekh Simon, p.- dg of price comparison site PlanHub.
Indeed, the rising price of new phones may have eroded a good part of the savings made on the side of the packages offered by the suppliers.
Since devices are usually amortized over several months, their owners end up paying for two things each month: the phone and the wireless plan. Taken together, these two amounts have not really decreased over the past two years, says the Montreal expert.
As an indication, he gives the example of Apple’s iPhone. The base version of the newest model, the iPhone 13, currently costs $1,135, compared to $1,000 for the base iPhone 11 launched in fall 2019.
However, when providers sell these new models, they strongly encourage buyers to opt for a minimum monthly mobile plan which also costs more, since the services it includes are more generous.
In other words, when consumers want to change devices, they generally inherit a higher monthly bill thereafter, concludes Nadir Marcos Mechaiekh Simon. This explains why even Minister Champagne kept his promises for targeted packages, the consumer, he does not have the impression. “The consumer is looking for [des forfaits offrant] much more data! he exclaims. We went from 2 gigabytes per month on average at the beginning of 2019 to 6 gigabytes at the end of 2021. “
Down, up
To be able to claim to have fulfilled his promise, Minister Champagne recalls that the calculations related to three specific packages of 2, 4 and 6 gigabytes per month of mobile data, without taking into account the cost of the device since these packages are of the “bring your phone “.
However, the price of certain plans that offer more mobile data has also fallen, adds Statistics Canada in its most recent price index for mobile telecommunications services. The federal agency observed a 22-26% reduction in the price of plans of 10 gigabytes or more, which contributed to a more general reduction of 26.9% in prices for wireless services in Canada between February 2020 and December 2021.
This did not prevent the main Canadian wireless service providers from extracting a little more money from their customers over the same period. Thus, between the end of 2019 and the end of 2021, Bell, Rogers and Telus all saw their average monthly revenue per user, an index that serves as a benchmark in the industry, increase slightly. Only Videotron saw this data drop, also slightly, over the same period. Analysts attribute this phenomenon to the popularity of the low-cost service Fizz from the Montreal provider.
Overall, the average monthly income per user varies in Canada between $49 and $58, according to the data made public by the various providers.
By comparison, the average revenue per user of US wireless service providers has fallen slightly over the past five years. It is currently around US$34.
The work of the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry is not finished, notes François-Philippe Champagne. “Canadians are still paying too much for Internet and cellular services,” he said in a statement. We will continue to act decisively using all the tools at our disposal to foster innovation, improve service coverage and reduce the cost of telecommunications services. »