Incumbents defend wireless prices after Bains criticism

TORONTO — Representatives from the big three were on the defense a day after the innovation minister publicly took issue with wireless prices, pointing to investments they’ve made in their networks and the quality of service that’s available to Canadians. “Nowhere in the world is the wireless industry hitting the grand slam on the four metrics” of price, investment, quality and coverage, BCE Inc.’s chief regulatory officer Mirko Bibic said during a panel discussion at the Canadian Telecom Summit Tuesday. He noted that during Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains’ speech on Monday, in which Bains talked about the need for more affordable wireless prices, Bains spoke about all four of those metrics. “On investment, on quality and on coverage, I think the minister had great things to say about our wireless industry,” Bibic said, adding that “the minister, I think, is looking for a grand slam, like, let’s lead on all four.” He said no country is doing that, arguing that Japan, for example, has excellent metrics on investment, quality and coverage, but high prices, while European countries like France, Germany and the United Kingdom have lower prices, “but they absolutely stink on the other metrics.” David Watt, senior vice-president of regulatory at Rogers Communications Inc., said most Canadians don’t recognize “the quality of the networks, and the investment that goes into those networks. Rogers alone, we spent eight billion dollars on our wireless network alone over the last five years.” He added that Rogers commissioned a poll of “informed Canadians” that found 37 per cent thought the government was “the majority funder of investment of infrastructure.” “So it may not be surprising that they think maybe prices are higher than they think they should be, given that they think that the government is funding it and they’re paying for it in their taxes,” he said. “I think the industry, we need to do a better job of explaining the investments that we do make,” which amount to “well over 95 per cent” of the total. The panelists also took issue with the “Wi-Fi first” model the minister ordered the CRTC to reconsider mandating, which he said relies primarily on WiFi and only falls back on commercial wireless networks when customers are out of range. The CRTC decision he sent back involved rules imposed following a dispute between Iristel Inc.’s Sugar Mobile and Rogers. While customers mostly used WiFi for voice, text and Internet access, the plans also included 200 MB of non-WiFi data per month, which was supported by the Rogers network when outside of the Ice Wireless service area. The CRTC said that Rogers didn’t have to provide services to Sugar Mobile. Ted Woodhead, senior vice-president of federal government and regulatory affairs at Telus Corp., said that such services are “a form of a very low-end MVNO.” Both Woodhead and Bibic argued that Canadians want better quality service and devices than can be found through such products. Bibic brought up the now-defunct Public Mobile, a new entrant that was acquired by Telus in 2013. “It was a lower-quality, lower-prices no-frills type service, and Canadians don’t want Wind to some extend tried that,” and has now been sold to Shaw Communications Inc., which is upgrading its network to LTE “because that’s what Canadians want. Canadian want to have the best phones, the best networks.” Woodhead added that part of the reason Public Mobile wasn’t successful was because “Canadians are the second-highest users of data in the world. They like devices and high-end smartphones … Canadians also like heavily subsidized devices, and all of these factors, those are the factors that play into various pricing levels.” But Bram Abramson, chief legal and regulatory officer at Teksavvy Solutions Inc., disagreed, stating that “to point to Public Mobile and say, that didn’t work in the end because someone else bought them eventually, now we know that Canadians don’t want lower prices for lower quality, I don’t think we’ve made that case.” CORRECTION: A previous version of this story quoted Watt as saying that Rogers had spent one billion on investment in its wireless network in the past five years. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

Incumbents defend wireless prices after Bains criticism

News | June 6, 2017

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Incumbents defend wireless prices after Bains criticism

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