Despite New Services, Roaming Charges Remain High in Canada

Living under a telecom oligopoly is no easy thing. Canadians can attest to that as they face high mobile roaming charges from major telecom companies. Recently, the OECD released a report that reveals that Canada has the highest roaming prices among all OECD countries. Canadians pay an average $24.61 US per month for roaming, while the OECD average is less than $10 US. Our high roaming charges are merely a reflection of the lack of competition in our telecom industry.

In a competitive communications market, companies would be forced to lower their prices, and meet the demands of Canadian cell-phone users. But what are big telecom companies doing? The opposite.

Rogers, for example, has just launched an alert program to warn customers about their roaming usage and to let them know when they ‘need’ to purchase a new roaming pass. This new service (designed for customers who have already purchased a roaming pass) allows Canadians to monitor their mobile phone use to avoid heavy roaming charges.

While the alert system will allow customers to keep track of their usage, this new service does little to make roaming services more affordable for Canadians. Instead of dealing with the problem at hand, Rogers has successfully created another mechanism to limit Canadians’ services while maintaining its high prices.

Canadians can stand up against the Big Telecom oligopoly, and fight for a more competitive communications system at http://www.StopTheMeter.ca

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Click here for the full OECD report