From June 3 to 5 I was lucky to attend the twelfth annual Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto . Organized by Mark Goldberg and Michael Sone, the CTS brings together the prime movers of our industry for some thought provoking presentations. This year also saw some major announcements from the CRTC and also the Canadian government.
The CRTC issued a new Code of Conduct for the wireless industry to try to reign in some of the worst anti-consumer practices in the industry. Then the Industry Minister, Christian Paradis, sent a clear message to the industry by blocking the Telus proposed purchase of Mobilicity. The direction of the government and the regulator is clearly being signaled as “pro-consumer” which I applaud and support.
I am lucky to have been in the telecom industry for over 30 years and have witnessed incredible growth and advancements in that time period. When the Canadian market deregulated in the early 1990’s I was an executive at ACC. CRTC Decision 92-12 in 1992 opened the door to true long distance competition in Canada and many new entrants such as CallNet, fonorola, STN and ACC fought hard for consumers against the established incumbent telcos.
Fast forward to 2013… all those early long distance competitors are gone, bought by the telcos… our new wireless entrants are all in danger of being bought by the telcos. The Canadian telecom market is controlled by three companies Bell, Telus and Rogers. Some things have changed, some things have not.
Here at Amitel, we support the “pro-consumer” approach, and we strive to earn your business every day. We are proud to compete fairly in the market, using our premium quality as our competitive advantage. We don’t believe in long term contracts, or bundling, or unfair consumer practices.
We look forward to serving you, and being a vibrant part of the Canadian competitive telecom landscape and seeing what the next 30 years will bring.
