It's been a very bad injury season for me. First playoff game for softball, on the worst possible field (which is deserving of more than a letter to the Slo-Pitch softball league). A deep divet between first and second that you can't see until it swallows your foot, swallowed mine, taking me down with it, resulting in two badly (bloody) skinned, bruised knees. Thankfully two of my roommates who are coworkers drive to work, so I've been able to catch a ride with them.
They listen to the radio on the way to and from work, and this week there has been a commercial against allowing US telecommunications companies to enter the Canadian market.
As an American, the ad struck me more as fear mongering than anything else. No one likes it when foreigners invade their turf and squeeze them out in the process. Sounds like American telecos would bring nationwide calling to Canada, which currently does not exist. Really. It's done by region, very much like how the US used to be when T-Mobile first started. T-Mobile, at the time, was the only carrier to offer nationwide anything.
I've gotten over it. I don't know anyone, personally, in Canada, outside Vancouver. If there were such a thing as worldwide calling, I'd be all over that.
Anyway, (http://mobilesyrup.com/2013/08/13/industry-ministers-open-letter-says-more-wireless-competition-is-better-for-canada/)[this article popped up in my Google+ stream] that talks about "policy loopholes," the culprits allowing American telecos the ability to enter Canada, and bid on a spectrum auction.
Reading the article makes me think of Chicago. Anthony S. Fell, a Director of BCE wrote a letter in which he said:
“the biased spectrum auction and other major subsidies being proposed for Verizon have all the hallmarks of a political populist initiative to capitalize on a mis-informed public view that the Canadian cellular market is uncompetitive and Canadian cellphone charges are much higher in Canada than in the U.S… if the Canadian market is so uncompetitive and if cellphone charges so high and Canadian telecos so profitable, why can’t Verizon enter the market with no subsidy just like everyone else?”
Hrm…political populist initiative…mis-informed public…enter a market with no subsidy like everyone else…sounds quite similar to Chicago politics.
The response from the politicians, though, is decidedly different than responses from American politicians. Canadian politicians call their constituents smart, and informed. The last paragraph of the article reads:
Finally, to cap off the topic that Canadians are misinformed: “I think Canadians know very well what is at stake and they know dishonest attempts to skew debates via misleading campaigns when they see them. Equally, Canadian consumers know instinctively that more competition will serve their families well through better service and lower prices.”
I don't know that I agree Canadian consumers "instinctively" know more competition serves them, but kudos to a politician making an effort to speak intelligently about its public.