COMMENTARY: Facilities-based competition is good policy and a worthwhile "obsession"

By Robert Ghiz CANADA’S REGULATORS HAVE long recognized that facilities-based competition is the best way to achieve the objectives of high-quality services, wide network coverage, and affordable prices. Favouring facilities-based competition has resulted in billions of dollars of private investment, building the fastest mobile wireless networks in the world. Even in rural areas Canada’s networks perform better than the overall networks in most other countries. This combination of quality and coverage, together with an intensely competitive mobile wireless market evidenced by a steady decline in prices, is why a recent report commissioned by the U.S. wireless industry association actually ranked...