Cellular Pricing and Telecom Debt in Canada

Its interesting how the blogosphere responds to dead tree media on a story that was discussed in the blogosphere a few months back.

Case in point – Cellular Pricing in Canada.

The National Post reported today RIM’s and Google’s unhappiness on the pricing of Data services in the Canadian Market. Michael Geist weighs in here.

I’m beginning to think that when I look at something I look for the potential why’s rather than discuss the why not’s. Its something numerous history papers taught me. In other word there are always correlations between things and they can be fun to explore, they can be bunk but they can also explain things not patently obvious in first glance – this is one of those times.

Lets take a look at the problem.

People in Canada are surprised that their data rates are no where near competitive with similar plans in the U.S. and the Europe.

This problem is not limited to any one provider in Canada but across the Board all Canadian Carriers charge significantly higher than in the U.S. or United Kingdom.

For this to make sense, look at the really nice graphs of the problem in by Thoms Purves.

Now here’s my Graph:

Is there a correlation?

Just an FYI – all debt #’s were found by a quick google search (over lunch) on the latest numbers I could find. Vodaphone is an anomaly as they wrote off a bunch of stuff a year or two ago but I haven’t bothered to look into it much. Also – I’ve included all debt for all companies. – Including any Landline or TV/Cable businesses. Its all in US dollars except for the Canadian companies (I got lazy and we’re approaching parity anyhow.)