<story><title>Canada&apos;s Telecom Market is Rigged, says Wind Mobile backer Naguib Sawiris</title><url>http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Wind-Billionaire-Backer-Rips-Rigged-Canadian-Market-117095?nocomment=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jbarham</author><text>By way of comparison, I&apos;m living in Melbourne, Australia, and pay $55/month for the Nexus S w/ unlimited calls within Australia (including to other mobile phones), unlimited texts (IIRC) and 500 MB of data.  That&apos;s for a one-year plan w/ Vodafone, and I didn&apos;t pay anything up-front for the phone.  Needless to say I&apos;m looking forward to upgrading to the Galaxy Nexus soon. :)  My wife has the the same phone and same plan for two years and pays $45/month.&lt;p&gt;The Australian mobile phone market is very competitive, and it has a number of foreign players (e.g., Optus, Vodafone, Virgin).  Australian fixed-line telecommunications are much less competitive due to the legacy stranglehold of the former government monopoly, Telstra.&lt;p&gt;IMO Canadians are far too complacent about government sanctioned monopolies or oligopolies (e.g., car insurance in BC, alcohol sales are provincial government monopolies, dairy product quotas, wheat board monopoly) that means they pay more for less choice, supposedly for their own good, when in reality it just enriches an old-boys network of politically well-connected players and condemns the protected industries to being being unable to compete internationally.&lt;p&gt;FWIW I&apos;m Canadian.</text></comment>
<story><title>Canada&apos;s Telecom Market is Rigged, says Wind Mobile backer Naguib Sawiris</title><url>http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Wind-Billionaire-Backer-Rips-Rigged-Canadian-Market-117095?nocomment=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zmanji</author><text>I&apos;ve never understood why in many western industrialized countries telecommunications has not been regulated the same as sewage, roads, electricity, etc. It is a vital piece of infrastructure in the 21st century and it should be the responsibility of the government to manage such infrastructure.</text></comment>