[MLUG] 3g cellular data

[David Montminy]

Annie Mozzity wrote:
> Leslie wrote:
>
>   
>> To whom can we forward your email so that others in the government know what
>> is the norm outside of Rigers and ting-a-ling?
>>     
>
> Probably best to do some actual rigorous research into the prices available else where and not just forward a rant. I can tell you the main providers over in Germany are O2, e-plus, vodafone, amongst others and e-plus seemed to be the cheapest pay as you go. (The 5 EUR SIM with more than 5 EUR of credit).
>
> A.M.
>
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This is, sadly, not news. There is no real competition in the cellphone 
market because of the high initial infrastructure cost. You can't really 
start a new cellphone business without cell towers and these cost a lot 
(so much in fact, that Roger, Bell and Telus actually rent space on the 
competition's towers because it's cheaper.) And you need a LOT of 
antennas for all the special cases. (There's somewhere around 70 antenna 
just for Montreal, mostly downtown.)

But once your costs are covered, the rest is pure profit: having one or 
more customers in any link is the same price (as long as the link is not 
saturated)

Micheal Geist talked about this in 2007, saying that the rates for data 
plans in Canada were actually twice the rate of Mozambique or Tanzania 
or 14 times the rate of places like Italy:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2117/135/

Unfortunately, there's isn't much we can do short of starting our own 
cellphone provider or lobby the government to put limits on pricing.

This issue is similar to the bandwith caps, throlling and filtering that 
is being pushed by ISP: we are all upset, but there isn't anything we 
can do because there is no other real alternative.

David Montminy