Earlier today, TD Securities issued a report that said “it is time for the government to declare victory in the 12-year quest (since the first set aside of spectrum in the 2008 auction) to help consumers via sustainable competition from a facilities-based fourth carrier in almost every region.”
TD found that the average revenue per user (ARPU) for Canadian mobile service providers are “comfortably below” US, “which feeds into our strong view that the CRTC and ISED should not and will not implement new measures to mandate either lower prices or widespread MVNOs.” In the view of TD, network quality, spectrum costs, scale, and population density all impact operating expense and capital expenditures for Canadian carriers relative to their global peers and should be considerations in the various regulatory and policy reviews of consumer wireless pricing.
“But even if we ignore these factors and just look at what Canadian consumers pay on average per month to incumbent carriers (keeping in mind that reported ARPU for new entrants Shaw and Quebecor is even lower than that of Rogers/BCE/TELUS), we no longer see a problem that policymakers need to fix.”
I said it 5 months ago: “Declare victory. Consumers are winning”.