Canadians pay the highest rates in North America for cable and satellite television signals and for cell phone service. All thanks to the fact that competition is stifled (smothered?) by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Rogers has just announced that they will be putting the screws to their hapless customers once again. This time they are cutting the size of Local Calling Areas – the geographic zone in which you can make calls without paying a Long Distance Charge – effective March 15. (Read more>>)
We need more competition in the mobile devices market and the key to that is to eliminate all the unnecessary red tape hurdles potential competitors have to clear with the CRTC before they can enter the market.
File Under “They Just Don’t Get It”: CRTC struggling to rein in rising phone, TV prices
Today CBC.ca carried a story about the poor ol’ CRTC trying to rein in rising prices for cell phone and cable TV services. They can’t seem to grasp the fact that the very monopolies they have created are to blame for the out-of-control pricing of cell service and cable TV in Canada. The only ‘price control’ that works is an open and competitive free market that allows consumers to choose their suppliers.
The CRTC is out-of-touch and irrelevant: scrap it and open up the cell phone and cable TV markets to competition.