Phone bill too high in Canada?

Here is a story on how a Rogers customer got her phone and internet bill cut in half, from more than $300 to around $150.

She stayed on the phone for 5 hours to achieve that.  5 hours are gruelling but saving $150 per month or $1800 per year.  That is significant savings for many individuals and families. I am so glad that she did it. What perseverance! She told them that she had to switch to another provider because they offered a better deal.  They kept transferring her from one department to another. In the end, she had to tell them that she is a teacher, and every penny counts on a teacher’s salary. It seems that finally she got the compassion from one of the customer service Reps and got her bill cut in half. Now Rogers is increasing her bill again. She might have to fight again unfortunately.

A Telecom research report showed phone bills in Canada is the most expensive in the world. It seems that that is enough to prove that we need more competition in Canada. However, the big three carriers in Canadian telecom industries will tell you that Canada is big with relatively smaller population while this industry needs constant network upgrade from one generation to the other. It is very capital intensive. Therefore, the price is justified. I think the study can show the profitability the phone and internet companies among all OECD countries rather than the price.

Now, Rogers and Shaw merger made another step forward. The Competition Bureau lost the fight on court to stop the merger. Now it is up the industry minster to decide. More concentration of this industry will not help with customer services or price. There was this big outage last summer by Rogers. Many people decided to diversify their phone and internet providers because this is essential services especially remote work is so popular now. The telecom players usually offer bundle deals which will give a bit discount if customer have both their phone and internet or even cable service with them.  What if it both went down? That’s exactly what happened to Rogers last summer. It is so hard to find a phone booth on the street now! LOL! When am I going to make a phone call in emergency? It is necessary to use different providers for mobile phone vs internet.

Diversify, diversify, diversify. It seems that this is the key for many things.