THANK YOU FOR DOING what no mainstream reporters did and provide some analysis on the OECD numbers on wireless rates. Your story got it right. You can’t compare the EU and North America.
But why did mainstream media fail so badly in objectively reporting this? There were obvious signals. The first is that the U.S. is rated most expensive, but we all know it’s been accepted as fact that the U.S. has the lowest per minute costs in the world. (See Merrill Lynch Quarterly)
Number two is the minutes of use of the average European in the report: 780 minutes a year is a joke. TELUS customers do six times more than that. But it’s not reflective of real EU usage because Europeans have multiple accounts. So you have to add up the total costs of accounts, as Mark Goldberg suggests, to get what the customer really pays.
Number three is the calling-party-pays regime in Europe. In the EU the local phone customer pays for calls to cell nets, not the wireless customer. Wonder how Canadians would like to pay for all basic phone calls on a usage basis. Canada would no longer have the cheapest landline prices in the world but their cell phone would "seem" less, according to the OECD. Hey maybe TELUS should apply to CRTC for local measured basic service right now to enhance our national pride and increase shareholder value.
So, garbage in garbage out: OECD garbage that the government of Canada helps create by its participation in this sham. But you know, even using these silly and misleading baskets and costs, our TELUS and Koodo plans beat the OECD average at every level. Of course the OECD does not measure TELUS.
Michael Hennessy
SVP government and regulatory affairs
TELUS
