OTTAWA-GATINEAU – Canadians’ increasing use of Internet and mobile services helped to drive up telecommunications revenues 3.2% to $50.3 billion in 2017, slightly faster than the five-year average annual growth rate of 2.9%, the CRTC said Thursday.
In the telecom portion of its 2018 Communications Monitoring Report (CMR), the Commission said that over half (58.2%) of the total revenue share was earned by the country’s large incumbent TSPs, while 34.0% was generated by cable-based carriers, which it defines as the former cable monopolies that currently also provide telecommunications services. Resellers earned 3.6%, other service providers generated 3.2%, and small incumbent TSPs earned 1.0%.
Grouping companies to include their affiliates, the five largest providers of telecommunications services accounted for 87% of total revenues in 2017. These company groups – Bell, Quebecor, Rogers, Shaw and Telus, are a mix of incumbent TSPs and cable-based carriers though all are facilities-based service providers. Since 2013, however, the incumbent TSPs’ (large and small) share of revenues has been declining by about one percentage point per year, to 59% in 2017.
Retail services generated 92% of total revenue share for 2017, while wholesale services, provided by facilities-based TSPs, garnered just 8%.
Other highlights from the report include:
– The retail Internet sector posted revenues of $11 billion in 2017, a 7.7% increase from 2016 (residential revenues were up 8.8%, and business revenues were up 2.8%);
– 86% of households subscribed to Internet service, with subscriptions up 3.9% compared to 2016;
– Monthly data usage by high-speed Internet service subscribers increased by 30% from 2016 to 2017;
– FTTH Internet service is now available to 35% of households (up from 28% in 2016), with 11% of households subscribing;
– 50/10 Mbps service with unlimited data transfer was available to 84% of Canadian households (unchanged from 2016);
– Mobile revenues reached $24.5 billion in 2017, a 5.3% increase from the previous year;
– There were 31.7 million mobile subscribers in Canada in 2017, a 3.1% compared to 2016;
– Approximately 92% of Canadians had access to LTE-Advanced network services in 2017, compared to 83% in 2016;
– LTE mobile networks covered 99% of the population and over 86% of major roads and highways in Canada;
– The average mobile data subscriber used over 2 GB of data per month in 2017, a 30% increase from the previous year.
