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Ask HN: Addressing Canadian Telco Abuse of Power

35 points by grownseed ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I've been living in Canada for a few years now, after having lived in several other countries. When I first arrived, I was shocked by how expensive phone/internet providers are, and as time went on, things only appeared to get worse.

Every now and then, I check "competing" offers only to find out that they essentially cost the same, sometimes in roundabout ways (confusing consumers with a myriad of options and such). To make matters worse, costs are actually going up. One such example was Shaw downgrading all of their offers (bandwidth, usage, etc.), while effectively hiking up their prices. Likewise, they'll increase the price of your existing package every so often, with absolutely no justification.

I've tried to get clarifications from various telcos, which went about as well as one might imagine. As many other people are, I'm convinced there is corporate collusion at play here, which is reinforced by the few oligopolies running the business. Despite repeated outrage over the years (a quick Google search for Canadian telco oligopolies/collusion will bring up tons of results), nothing has happened and things keep getting worse.

What resources are available to the general public to push this trend back? How would the kind people of HN address this situation in a constructive, realistic and effective manner?

Thank you!

17 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 56.1 ms ] thread
DKnoll
Very, very little. The CRTC and the Competition Bureau are the relevant political bodies if you feel like trying.

I pay $79.99 CAD/month for 250Mb/20Mb with no data cap (I have pushed this to extremes, there is no hidden cap) from Rogers. I'm pretty happy with it.

Telecom has always been a cabal in Canada, predating the Internet. Good luck trying to change it.

anonbanker
As a litigious american immgrant, I've been able to mitigate my costs with counter-claims.

Every time the price goes up, I send their CFO a bill for the yearly difference of my charges. After the second notice, when the CFO has defaulted and is now personally liable for a lien, I get a polite letter from someone else in the company saying that my bill has been "credited for mistaken charges."

When my bandwidth goes down, I bill them back for the adjusted bandwidth. same song and dance, and the bandwidth shoots up again after an "upgrade on your node was completed".

In short, I've had a 100Mbit connection with Shaw for 4 years now, with (almost) no outages for $70/month.

deskamess
How does that work? I mean what is the basis for the counter claim in law? I don't mind writing a couple of letters to get this going.
anonbanker
If you're really interested in the foundations of filing a counterclaim, I would suggest Brian Blum's seminal work[0]. It will explain in great detail more than I could summarize.

However, I'll relay a parable told to me in first-year law school contracts class:

A man picks up a hitchiker on the side of the road. beautiful girl. She offers to fool around with him while driving (use your imagination). after the act is over, she says "I forgot to mention: I'm a prostitute, and that act cost $50."

Without missing a beat, the driver responds, "It just so happens that I forgot to mention: I'm a taxi driver, and this trip costs $60, so I'll take the $10 you owe me now."

0. https://www.amazon.com/Examples-Explanations-Contracts-Brian...

sounds
If you published this as a blog post (anonymize first, if you wish), and it included some measurements along the way of what you've seen over 4 years, you'd get a happy following here on HN and over at dslreports.com.

Please do!

andy9775
The other issue with Canadian telecom is that certain companies are essentially given a government monopoly in certain areas. Where I live, cogeco provides cable Internet and Bell DSL. However, in the next city Rogers does cable and another does DSL. The logic is that one company owns one line and does maintnence on it. Also encourages companies to raise prices and decrease service since you have no other choice.

As for cell phones, it comes down to competition. I know that Saskatchewan as saskatel and the offerings from Rogers, Bell Telus used to be half of what you would pay on other provinces (haven't checked this lately).

tonyarkles
Still true re: Sasktel, as far as I know. I've had a lot of family and friends leave the province, but try to keep their 306 number for as long as possible, to stay locked into their existing Telus or Bell contracts while living in another province.

For reference, I pay $90/mo for 13GB of data, unlimited talk including long distance, unlimited SMS. Could it be cheaper? Sure. My old plan was "unlimited" (throttled after 10GB), but was only around $65. Had to change plans when I broke my old phone.

fmilne
https://oyyo.ca provides beta testers with a telephone number in exchange for feedback. Runs on WiFi or with a tablet data plan from Rogers or Bell.
PerfectElement
I've been with Wind Mobile for years (unlimited everything for $40/month), but I've got tired of not having service when I really needed it. Now that I have an online business, I can't afford to be offline every time I drive out of town. I'm moving to Rogers and going to pay more than double for 5GB of data.
tonyarkles
Don't come out to the prairies! Out here, Rogers pretty much only has coverage in the major cities and along the major highways (sounds similar to your experience with Wind). Sasktel/Telus/Bell all share Sasktel's towers, and Sasktel has a mandate to cover a huge amount of the province. Last I heard, Rogers had entered a peering agreement with Sasktel finally, but they charge customers extra to connect to the rural towers.
Spoom
Bell is required to lease out its lines, so if you're in an area with a good DSL connection, check out TekSavvy[1] who have very good reviews[2]. You are still subject to Bell occasionally being dicks, but it's better than paying Bell directly.

1. http://teksavvy.com/

2. http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/2564

grownseed
Just wanted to say thanks to everybody for the great feedback! I'm really glad I turned to HN for this.

Some people mentioned OpenMedia, who happen to be based in Vancouver where I am, so I'm planning on giving them a shout soon.

As for the CRTC, I spent a bit of time looking them up and I have to admit it didn't make me feel particularly confident in their ability to make anything happen. That said, I'm happy to be proven wrong.

Again, thank you all, I'm hopeful something can be done.

spoonie
If you are lucky enough to live in an area with any kind of competition, choose them over the incumbents. You should choose them even of they provide worse speeds or less comprehensive customer service. Ideally you should choose a fully independent ISP that doesn't lease any infrastructure from the incumbents.