In Saturday’s National Post, Peter Nowak reported that RIM wants to see Canadian carriers offer more competitive data plans. Don Morrison is quoted in that article as saying:
We haven’t seen a carrier yet take up the banner of really going after the mass market. We think it’s to their benefit.
In yesterday’s National Post, Peter cites Michael Geist‘s blog which asserts that high fees for data services are what is holding back Canada’s introduction of the iPhone.
The barrier to the iPhone in Canada is not Apple. Rather, it is the lack of wireless competition that, as now RIM and Google both note, leads to pricing that places Canadians at a significant disadvantage compared with other developed countries.
I think that assertion is a little far reaching. If our data prices are holding back the Canadian launch of iPhone, why isn’t the iPhone available anywhere else in the world either?
The reply comments by the Competition Bureau in the AWS auction consultation address the state of competition from a legal perspective – particularly, competition law.
These sentences, extracted from the submission, may be an appropriate summary of the views of the Competition Bureau:
it is the removal of foreign ownership restrictions, not auction intervention, that may be the more powerful instrument of competition.
Given the present restrictions, however, intervention may still be appropriate if domestic entrants can provide effective competition, given the incentives of incumbents [to prevent entry by bidding their economic value for the spectrum plus a premium representing their potential loss of profit]
The paper represents a discussion, from the viewpoint of competition law, of the first round of submissions from all of the parties.
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Industry Canada, Competition Bureau, wireless, spectrum auction, AWS