Quote:
Originally Posted by HOOT
Out to Lunch? I think you need to look at the land they need to cover before you start yapping away. Iceland is also the size of the State of Kentuky. I would assume covering the parts of the Canada which are populated or needed it would be a bit more than that.
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Population density of Canada: 8.3 per square mile, including over a million square miles in the Yukon, NWT, and Nunavut where you can bet your bottom dollar Rogers isn't even *thinking* of providing service. In the areas where Rogers does have service, the density is a great deal higher than that.
Population density of Iceland: 7.5 per square mile.
Furthermore, the population of Canada, and therefore the potential number of cellular customers, is 100 times that of Iceland. The Canadian market is big enough to allow economies of scale that Iceland just can't match.
So let's try again. If Iceland can have profitable cell providers offering cheap and flexible plans, including data, without the nuisances, never-never plans, and vendor lock-ins that plague our market, why can't we? We've ruled out population density; we've ruled out the total size of the market. What's left?
The fact is, Rogers (the worst offender), Bell, and Telus all benefit from a vastly overregulated market. No Canadian startup can afford to compete against them (Fido and Clearnet tried, failed, and were taken over), and no foreign company is even permitted to try.
This last is the key point. If Verizon or AT&T were permitted to set up shop in Canada, our own telcos would have to smarten up and give value for money if they wanted to survive. Likely one or more of them would not.
It would be very much like when Wal-Mart came to Canada. Zellers and Canadian Tire adapted beautifully, and actually increased their sales and market penetration even in the face of sharply lower prices for mass-market consumer goods. A lot of other retailers couldn't stand the heat: not just Canadian retailers like Eaton's, but American branch plants like Kmart. And you know what? Except for a handful of professional xenophobes like Maude Barlow, nobody missed them when they were gone.
If Canadian companies can't or won't provide decent service at reasonable prices, let's open up the market to those who will.