One of the great peeves of the Canadian wireless subscriber is the service agreements all of the providers demand be agreed to in order for the subscriber to acquire wireless services.
The wireless industry say they need an agreement as a guarantee against early cancellation and they support this argument with the fact that they need to recover the costs of the phones they provide.This is a good and valid argument, but is it realistic or is it little more than a ploy to avoid competition within the industry?That too is a valid question, and one no one wants to answer including the CRTC.
One of the hooks the wireless providers used to have was your phone number.If you left the company to go to another provider you lost your phone number and received a new one.To many this inconvenience was more than that; it amounted to a loss of identity in that it was akin to changing addresses.This was eventually deregulated to the howls of unfair by the industry but it was good for the consumer.
Consider a business whose sales force uses cellular services for its day to day functioning.A client knew that calling a given number she or he would reach the sales representative they knew.However if the company were to change providers, those numbers were lost and contact information required updating including internal records the company kept.It was not an inexpensive change.Portability of the phone number was a drastic and very welcomed change by everyone.
The wireless companies also charge for “system access”.Basically this is a charge that the consumer pays whether or not they use their phone and is additional to any monthly plans.
Contracts are required by the companies “to ensure the cell phones are fully paid for by the end of the contract”.However if one buys their own phone outright, the cell companies still want to lock you into their services.They guarantee that the prices of your services wont rise during the life of the contract.However they don’t guarantee that system access fees wont or limits wont be imposed.Most consumers can't afford to spend a couple of hundred dollars on their cell phone so the cellular companies provide the phone as a part of the contract and the consumer pays an up front charge for part of the phone.The irony to this is the contract price is the same whether you buy your phone up front or over the period of the contract.So, one has to ask, where are the phone payments?
Canadians pay for their wireless services and pay dearly as Canadian wireless is amongst the most expensive in the world.One has to ask why?How can other wireless companies be competitive elsewhere and for less cost than Canadians pay?There is only one answer; It is a cash cow allowed by Federal Deregulation.
Deregulation is supposed to create more competition and thus be good for the consumer.It would appear that less competition means less need for competition among the carriers.Hopefully, the new entrants to the wireless sector will provide more competition.If not, then Canadians have a definite argument against deregulation of this and perhaps other areas of our economy.