OTTAWA – A survey released Wednesday morning by Nanos Research, commissioned by Telus and Bell, says a clear majority of Canadians (81%) believe that neither foreign? nor Canadian-?owned telecommunications companies should be favoured in the upcoming 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction.
“If the government were to create an advantage in the marketplace in any industry, respondents prefer that the government favour Canadian (70%) over foreign?owned companies. Only 2% prefer that foreign?owned companies be given an advantage,” reads the Nanos press release.
Respondents are clearly more likely to think that Canadian companies would do a better job at creating jobs, investing and providing rural service compared to foreign companies.
Although price is an important aspect of their wireless service (the most important one, according to an independent survey we wrote about here), Canadians clearly believe that lowering wireless service prices is not as important (7%) a government priority as lowering gas prices (45%) or college/university tuition (33%) as a government priority.
Here is a direct link to the poll results, complete with questions that were asked.
This study was comprised of a random telephone survey of 2,000 Canadians conducted between August 12th and 19th, Participants were randomly recruited by telephone. The sample included both land and cell?lines across Canada. The results were statistically checked and weighted geographically and by age using the latest Census data. Geographic oversamples were created to allow for more robust regional analysis, says the release.
The margin of error for a random survey of 2,000 Canadians is ±2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
