OTTAWA IS BIGGEST CELLPHONE PRICE GOUGER

   Corcoran:  Maybe Bains could explain how $21.7 billion in spectrum costs — money that is paid by consumers and flowed into general federal revenue and then budgetary spending — spurs innovation, competition and more affordable wireless. European wireless operators, with which Canada is often compared on price, have much lower spectrum costs to carry.
   Crandall in an interview said that in 2018, the major Canadian telcos reported spectrum carrying costs on their financial statements averaging $470 per wireless subscriber, with Telus at $694. That compares with $178 for Orange in France, $102 in Poland and $74 in Italy. Europe did not attempt to rig its auctions. In Canada, said Crandall, “the government thinks it can promote competition by giving spectrum to the smaller companies who don’t use it as intensely. Thus it ends up costing Canadians more because the big guys have less spectrum and therefore charge more for their services.” If Canada followed the European spectrum model, he estimates, Canadian wireless costs would be 12 per cent lower.

  According to research by Robert Crandall, a Washington technology consultant to Telus, Ottawa has collected $21.7 billion since 2008 through its manipulated auctions of the great invisible ocean of airwaves that the federal government controls.