The state of telecommunications services

Author

H. Ertl, H. McCarrell

Organization

Statistics Canada

Published

2002

Summary

Canada has generally taken an incremental approach to introducing competition in the telecommunications services industry, gradually opening up monopoly-based markets over the past 20 years.

According to a new study that assesses the state of the industry in the context of a changing regulatory environment, the wireline local services market, opened to competition only in 1997/98, remains the most highly concentrated.

At the opposite end of the scale, the mobile telecommunications services market is the least concentrated. In between are wireline long distance services, private line services and data services.

The study, titled The state of telecommunications services, also found that Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia - the three provinces with the largest telecommunications markets - have moved farthest from monopoly status.

The smaller markets of Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, along with Saskatchewan, where the introduction of competition was delayed, were the most highly concentrated.

This study analysed data from the annual and quarterly Surveys of Telecommunications for 1997 to 1999 to determine how the industry was performing and to construct measures of market concentration.

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Source: Consumer Policy Research Database