OTTAWA — In a study commissioned by U.S. industry association CTIA and conducted by New York-based NERA Economic Consulting, Canada’s wireless industry ranks highest in value proposition among G7 nations and Australia.
Canada’s wireless industry association, CWTA, highlighted the findings of the CTIA-commissioned study in a news release Monday afternoon. One of the study’s authors, Christian Dippon, is one of the experts employed by Telus for the CRTC’s wireless policy review process.
The study, titled A Comparison of the Mobile Wireless Value Proposition, was designed to show how the U.S. wireless industry compares to international peers when it comes to the value mobile wireless users receive upon purchase and use of wireless services, explains the CWTA news release.
NERA’s study used data from 1,554 retail plans offered by 213 mobile wireless providers in the summer of 2019 in the 36 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In addition to price, the study took into consideration plan characteristics, network quality and country attributes.
Based on all of those factors, the study showed wireless prices in Canada are approximately 4.7% lower than the average price that other G7 countries and Australia would charge for the same value proposition. Of the eight countries, the United States ranked second. The study’s authors note that this peer group (G7 countries plus Australia) is the one used by ISED Canada in annual price comparison studies conducted in the past by Wall Communications or Nordicity.
Using a different methodology to benchmark the United States’ value proposition against a peer group consisting of other leading competitive regulatory regimes, the study ranked Canada number one among this “leading democracies” group, saying wireless prices in Canada are approximately 4.3% lower than the average price this peer group would charge for the same mobile value proposition. In ranking order, the countries identified in this peer group were Canada, United States, Germany, Austria, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands and Australia.
It should be noted the study used several different methodologies to analyze the available data, including some that didn’t include Canada at all in the benchmarking model, such as a comparison of the value proposition of the wireless industry in the U.S. against a peer group of countries with similar GDP per capita to the United States. Another approach benchmarked the United States’ value proposition against countries with similar population densities to the U.S., which again did not include Canada in the comparison. One benchmarking methodology that compared the value proposition of the United States, Canada and the so-called EU15 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) ranked the United States fifth and Canada sixth. Among this peer group, Luxembourg had the highest value proposition.
