CRTC neuters 3-year cellphone contracts

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

Canadians can cancel their wireless contracts after two years under new CRTC code of conduct

(I'm not a fan of our Bell/Telus/Rogers oligopoly. We don't have Verizon/AT&T because of various "Buy Canadian" provisions, but the homegrown behemoths are not exactly affordable.)

Comments

[skipjumpfly.livejournal.com]

I spent a year studying in Canada and found the oligopoly and consequent poor standard of telecomms service to be unbelievable. The "Buy Canadian" provisions would explain it, I'm surprised such law could even be passed but I suppose I'm too used to open markets ideology of the EU.

[ice-hesitant.livejournal.com]

I called it "Buy Canadian" in order to make it understandable for US readers. US has a nasty habit of passing "Buy American" legislation at both federal and state levels despite having signed the North American Free Trade Agrement (NAFTA) with us a long time ago. For example, transit vehicle purchases will often require that final assembly take place in US.

The specific issue in telecommunications is that there's a restriction on the level of foreign ownership allowed for a telecommunications. This has caused difficulty for new entrants like Wind Mobile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_Mobile). Similar provisions also created a five bank oligopoly in the Canadian banking sector, but there it's less controversial.

The other nationalist thing we have in Canada are Canadian content requirements for radio and tv. These mean that you can't just rebroadcast a US, UK, or Australian channel in Canada -- you need to buy the programming and mix it with Canadian programming. This is a mixed blessing. One downside is that they end up overplaying Canadian musicians on the radio, so Canadians end up reviling our more successful artists (Nickelback, Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, etc).