‘Competition is the better way to go’ in wireless sector, Industry Minister says

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Sorry, Canada, gripes about your cellphone bill only go so far in Ottawa.

The Conservative government may be spending $9-million on a national advertising campaign telling Canadians they "pay some of the highest wireless rates in the developed world," but it has no plans to regulate consumer prices for cellphone services.

"Competition is the better way to go," Industry Minister James Moore said in an interview on Friday. "Government price controls is not the way to go."

That should come as a relief to telecom executives and Bay Street analysts who have voiced concerns about the government's persistent "meddling" in the $20-billion wireless market.

Some have wondered if those ongoing interventions – including new spectrum transfer rules and a coming cap on wholesale rates for domestic roaming – are signs the Conservatives are losing their capitalist stripes.

Mr. Moore's remarks on Friday confirm the Tories are still committed to taking a market-based approach to telecom regulation. And he is quick to point out that his government's policies have already caused wireless prices to tumble by an average of 18 per cent across the country.

But as his government's ads suggest, that doesn't mean he is finished tinkering with the rules.

"This is an industry that changes all the time," Mr. Moore said, adding he was closely watching the CES show in Las Vegas this week to see how emerging technologies could change infrastructure demands for telecom carriers.

The government, he adds, has an obligation to keep its eyes open and to assess how to best deploy publicly-owned assets, such as spectrum, to benefit the largest number of Canadians.

That means "there's always another chapter" in government policy, especially since Canadians are flocking to new technologies such as smartphones that run on high-speed LTE (long-term evolution) networks.

"I remember when 3G came online and everybody said 'My God, 3G is the greatest thing ever!' And now when your cellphone happens to drop from LTE down to 3G, and your YouTube video and your iPhone goes a little bit grainy, people just roll their eyes and get mad like they've been cheated out of something that they're entitled to," said Mr. Moore.

"So, this growing demand for high-speed Internet and high-speed connections is not going to be satiated. It's not something that people expect to be scaled back and so it's a never-ending and very interesting public policy debate that we're looking forward to."

And even though his government's ad campaign takes aim at the Big Three carriers, Rogers Communications Inc., BCE Inc. and Telus Corp., for holding "over 85 per cent of the airwaves," Mr. Moore says he really wants to see those incumbents succeed.

Part of that formula for success is ensuring those large carriers have more access to spectrum, or publicly-owned airwaves, to add capacity to their wireless networks. That is why, he says, Ottawa recently approved the sale of Public Mobile's spectrum to Telus.

"Contrary, I suppose, to the way in which things have appeared since the summer, we want Rogers and Telus and Bell to do well and to grow and to continue to provide world-class services and do great things," he said.

"But it would be irresponsible for the government to pursue a policy that did not aspire to draw in more competition."

(BCE owns a 15-per-cent stake in The Globe and Mail.)