OTTAWA-GATINEAU – "The telecommunications landscape has changed considerably since the release of the first report to the Governor in Council in 2001," said Charles Dalfen, chairman of the CRTC in releasing the Commission’s Telecom Monitoring Report to the Governor-in-Council.
(An earlier version of this story contained an mistake, which the Commission corrected today in an additional release. The fixed copy is in boldface below.)
"Our monitoring report indicates that Internet and wireless services continue to be the flagships of growth and innovation for the Canadian telecommunications industry and that technology continues to impact the industry, not only by lowering costs, but also by introducing new means of providing telecommunications services."
The report indicates that local competition has increased since 2000, although competitors have not yet generally gained the same level of market share in the local markets as they have in the long distance, Internet or data and private line markets. They have however, made inroads in both the business and residential urban markets in several major centres.
Highlights include:
* Total telecommunications revenues for 2004 were $33.3 billion, an increase of 4.7% over the previous year.
* In 2004, Internet and wireless services continued to be the engines of growth and innovation for the Canadian telecommunications industry.
* Canadians are well connected. Canada has a very high telephone penetration rate. Ninety-eight percent of Canadian households have telephone service. In addition, 59% of Canadian households have an Internet subscription.
Long distance
* Long distance revenues continued to decline, decreasing by 6% from $5.9 billion in 2003 to $5.6 billion in 2004, while the number of minutes increased by 6.0%. This reflects the competitive nature of the market, which has resulted in lower prices and an increase in consumption of the service. The incumbent telephone companies’ share of long distance revenues remained unchanged at 67%.
Local wireline
* In the local wireline market, local revenues and the number of telephone lines remained unchanged at approximately $9.7 billion and 20.6 million lines respectively in 2004.
* Local competitors have made inroads in a number of major Canadian centres. In 15 major centres, they have captured between 10% and 25% of business telephone lines. (The earlier version said "total telephone lines".)
Internet and broadband deployment
* The Internet market continued to display strong growth and continued to be competitive. Competitors captured 57% of the retail Internet access revenues which increased from $3.7 billion in 2003 to $4.2 billion in 2004, a 12.9% increase.
* The roll-out of broadband infrastructure continued to progress, with approximately 89% of Canadian households having access to broadband (i.e., high-speed Internet) service and 46% of Canadian households actually subscribing.
Wireless
* The number of wireless subscribers increased 12.9% to 15 million subscribers reflecting the competitive nature of the market.
* Wireless revenues increased from $8 billion in 2003 to $9.5 billion in 2004, a 17.6% increase.
Data and private line
* Data and private line revenues decreased by 1.6% from the previous year. This decline was the result of private line revenues that declined by 10%, offsetting a 6.9% revenue growth in the data segment. The competitors’ (including incumbent telephone companies operating outside of their territories) share of the market increased from 26% in 2003 to 27% in 2004.
