High Speed Train Coming?-split from boosting Canada’s military spending"

[Brad Sallows]

I mean much like our tele coms I also think we should break the control our big company's have and flood our markets with competition, not from China.

What is it that is going to be achieved?

I suppose foreign competitors could buy the wires, or entire legacy corporations. Data security becomes harder to achieve, though, irrespective of whether the nuts-and-bolts storage facilities are still entirely in Canada. (Ownership has access privileges; such a system will "leak".) And there's still basically a "Big 3", unless two or more foreign competitors carve up one of the "Bigs". Maybe subscribers don't lose, but of course the profits go overseas along with the ownership; ordinarily the latter prospect has all sorts of people screaming, sometimes for well-founded reasons.

I suppose foreign competitors could build their own wires. That would all have to be paid for, almost entirely by Canadian subscribers unless the foreigners think they can con their own domestic subscribers into subsidizing Canadians' internet habits. Upward pressure on rates does not solve the pricing "problem" most people think exists. Subscribers lose.

I suppose foreign competitors could just pay to use the ILECs' infrastructure (most likely CoA if foreign acquisition isn't permitted). If regulators don't get the rates exactly right, they could end up effectively subsidizing competitors to move in on the lucrative markets (and they will get to pick their markets) at the wire owners' expense. Wire owners would have no incentive (and less capital) to roll out each succeeding innovation. "You new guys want it; you build it. We're just going to eke out what the CRTC lets us from what we already have." Subscribers lose.

Canada has 3 dominant carriers. The US has 3 dominant carriers. That suggests we have enough dominant carriers.

The publicly available financial information speaks for itself. Whatever profiteering conspiracies people have concocted in their heads, the evidence of egregiously overcharged profits is not showing up in bottom lines.

 

[Halifax Tar]

What is it that is going to be achieved?

Cheaper rates for consumers.

 

[ytz]

The publicly available financial information speaks for itself. Whatever profiteering conspiracies people have concocted in their heads, the evidence of egregiously overcharged profits is not showing up in bottom lines.

I agree. Some of the highest average per user (ARPU) in the developed world.

The “Big Three” (Bell, Rogers, Telus) control 80-90% of the market2, facing little pressure to lower prices. Canada’s own Competition Bureau calls the Canadian wireless industry “highly concentrated, very profitable and extremely difficult to enter” – a clear sign of monopoly power at play3.

In 2024 their average revenue per user (ARPU) was $67.41 for wireless4. This same figure is just CAD$28.31 in the UK5 and CAD$22.05 across Europe6.

Source: Affordable Mobile Everywhere in Canada – For Good

And not like those high bills are giving value for money either. We rank 45th in the world for mobile internet speeds.

Canada's Mobile and Broadband Internet Speeds - Speedtest Global Index

Canada ranked 45th in the world for mobile speeds and 16th for fixed broadband speeds during March 2026.

www.speedtest.net

That lack of value does translate into profits. I'll concede that. Bell and Rogers are some of the highest ranked telcos on operating margin in the world.

Top telecommunication companies by operating margin

companiesmarketcap.com

For consumers? Canada's telecom sector is delivering yesterday's speeds at tomorrow's prices.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Cheaper rates for consumers.

Sure. See the part about reinvestment in new tech.

I couldn't easily find anything about the original projected cost of the fibreoptic rollout when it started in 2013 or so. My recollection is an amount that was roughly half of the company's annual gross revenue at the time, for just the first phase.

Here is an AI assisted answer I got today:

"TELUS has invested over $175 billion in infrastructure since 2000, with significant investments in fiber optic upgrades starting around 2013. Specific project costs for individual upgrades may vary, but the overall commitment reflects a long-term strategy to enhance broadband access across Canada."

At some point almost anyone living in a TELUS legacy neighbourhood must have noticed when their neighbourhood was rewired (FTTH, fibre to the home). AFAIK, it's still in progress. Try to imagine the cost of the crews and equipment if a homeowner were paying for it.

Everyone in a TELUS-served neighbourhood who subscribes to something coming in via landline benefits, irrespective of who their actual contract provider is.

Then of course there is the desire of governments to extend service to all the remote parts of Canada that could never possibly pay for themselves. The companies get grants, but those grants can't protect the companies from future costs if revenues on those segments aren't enough to break even. To the extent that pushes up rates for other subscribers (ie. subsidization occurs), that's the fault of governments, not telcos.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Sure. See the part about reinvestment in new tech.

I couldn't easily find anything about the original projected cost of the fibreoptic rollout when it started in 2013 or so. My recollection is an amount that was roughly half of the company's annual gross revenue at the time, for just the first phase.

Here is an AI assisted answer I got today:

"TELUS has invested over $175 billion in infrastructure since 2000, with significant investments in fiber optic upgrades starting around 2013. Specific project costs for individual upgrades may vary, but the overall commitment reflects a long-term strategy to enhance broadband access across Canada."

At some point almost anyone living in a TELUS legacy neighbourhood must have noticed when their neighbourhood was rewired (FTTH, fibre to the home). AFAIK, it's still in progress. Try to imagine the cost of the crews and equipment if a homeowner were paying for it.

Everyone in a TELUS-served neighbourhood who subscribes to something coming in via landline benefits, irrespective of who their actual contract provider is.

Then of course there is the desire of governments to extend service to all the remote parts of Canada that could never possibly pay for themselves. The companies get grants, but those grants can't protect the companies from future costs if revenues on those segments aren't enough to break even. To the extent that pushes up rates for other subscribers (ie. subsidization occurs), that's the fault of governments, not telcos.

You know how I know it would be better for consumers ? The existing companies don't want it and will fight to resist it.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I agree. Some of the highest average per user (ARPU) in the developed world.

ARPU isn't net profit, and isn't even net anything. What you wrote has nothing to do with my point.

And not like those high bills are giving value for money either. We rank 45th in the world for mobile internet speeds.

Here are some measures by which Canada seems to do a little better.

Speedtest tries to measure best performance. Opensignal tries to measure typical performance. People who want to compare performance should favour the latter.

What can we learn? That there are data one can cherry pick to support any set of priors, and different data mean different things. Across enough years, rankings move up and down.

For consumers? Canada's telecom sector is delivering yesterday's speeds at tomorrow's prices.

Not all factors are controlled by the corporations. See here.

I note that often smaller, densely populated countries tend to rank higher by many measurements, for some reason.

 

[Brad Sallows]

You know how I know it would be better for consumers ? The existing companies don't want it and will fight to resist it.

Well, then there are a couple of solutions.

Foreign corporations, which are motivated by a desire to improve life for Canadians and will be climbing over each other to make things better for Canadians at whatever cost to their bottom lines.

Governments, who will provide the service levels we've come to expect from typical government agencies and be as eager to spend money on upgrades as they are with respect to things like roads and bridges.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Should you then pay property taxes based on your declared value?

No, but they'd pay capital gains on any land that isn't the whole of the homestead.

 

[Brad Sallows]

You know how I know it would be better for consumers ? The existing companies don't want it and will fight to resist it.

I suppose it can't be stressed enough: the lack of foreign competition is because the government wants it that way. For some reason(s) the government wants Canadian corporations to hold and operate the assets of Canadian telecommunications infrastructure. It isn't as if the government is shy about sticking it to the Big 3 (eg. spectrum auctions) when it wants to.