Good morning. Complaints about telecommunications and television companies in Canada are surging, but one provider has maintained its status as the biggest source of consumer discontent. We name the champion below – and examine the past, present and future of an industry that has a special way of uniting the nation, but first:

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A new nuclear plant in Ontario is planned to be among the world’s biggest by output.

Teck Resources Ltd.’s production of the critical mineral germanium should be bolstered by a joint investment with the U.S., the federal government says.

Mountain Equipment Co. is up for sale again, as the end of the pandemic spending surge leaves it with too much inventory.

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We’ll start on July 8, 2022. I’m reaching for my wallet when the server delivers the upsetting news: The restaurant’s Interac system is down. I’d need to locate “paper money” to pay for the fish and chips cooling beside the cash register.

I speedwalk across the street to take out money from a convenience store’s ATM, but it’s not even plugged in. The clerk looks at me like I should have expected this. I reach for my phone: no service. Sullen and confused, I sit on a bench overlooking Lake Huron to contemplate my next steps. I have to admit, at that moment, my contemplations were very much still laser-focused on that fish. But it wasn’t long before I notice others appearing around me, an expression of bewilderment echoed across their faces. Dozens of us stand there for a while, disconnected from the internet, alone with our own boring thoughts, watching the birds dive in for their meals.

We would soon learn from talking with one another (!) that we were far from alone. In fact, more than 12 million customers of Rogers Communications Inc. had no access to the cable giant’s network. Across Canada, one of the largest network outages in the country’s history had shut down digital payment systems, made working from home impossible at a time when working from home was largely a requirement, and cut key health care and law-enforcement systems.

The network was down for about a day, but consumer anger over the outage would persist for months: at Rogers; at the Bell representatives canvassing the streets within days to offer basically the same service (although you can’t knock the hustle); and at the political and financial forces responsible for a telecom industry that presents very little choice for data plans that rank among the most expensive in the world.

Fast-forward to Jan. 16, 2025. A report by a telecom industry watchdog yesterday revealed that complaints about telecommunications and television companies in Canada spiked 38 per cent over the last year. Most of those complaints were over billing issues and service interruptions, Mariya Postelnyak reports. Rogers is responsible for nearly a quarter of customer discontent.

But as I type, my WiFi connection is suddenly blinking in and out again for reasons a parade of Bell technicians have been unable to explain since the late summer of 2022. Yes, that’s right: Bell, since the late summer of 2022. We were one of those households who eagerly signed on when two smiling young salespeople knocked on our door in the wake of the outage.

But what was I to do? Three companies account for the vast majority of Canada’s mobile and internet market. In fact, as Rogers was dealing with fresh scrutiny over how one human error at one company can take down so much of a country’s vital digital infrastructure, its leadership was pushing to grow larger – arguing in federal court to reverse a decision to block its attempted takeover of Shaw, the country’s second-largest cable company at the time. It maintained that the merger was a “demonstrably pro-competitive transaction.”

In the days following the outage, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said it was “going to be on the mind of the different people who need to make a decision” about the merger. In 2023, the federal government approved the $26-billion deal, the largest in Canadian telecom history.

That agreement came with some requirements, including that it divest its Freedom Mobile business, which it sold to Quebecor. Pierre Karl Peladeau, chief executive of the Quebec-based company, has set ambitious plans for Freedom to become a true national competitor. But after the CRTC sided with Telus Corp. last year on the amount it charges to access its network, Peladeau said he might need to rethink those goals.

Still, between Freedom and Cogeco Inc., which is planning to launch wireless services in Canada, there is a sliver of evidence that more competition is emerging in Canada. And since Ottawa gave its blessing to the Rogers-Shaw deal, prices for data plans appear to be falling.

The Big Three are also in a tough spot, struggling with slowing revenue growth, heavy restrictions against foreign investment and Ottawa’s recent reductions in immigration – a key source of new customers in recent years. None of this has been lost on investors, who have been punishing the companies’ share prices.

Calling ahead

Their commanding positions in Canada have been the subject of scrutiny for years. But so has the dominance of six players in banking and five in the grocery sector. At the centre of these lengthy divides have been worries over prices, but also a call by economists for political and business leaders to act more urgently to support innovation.

In 2022, Statistics Canada found that businesses with competitors are more likely to introduce new or improved products, methods or services. Canada has been slow in heeding these lessons. In a speech last year outlining the country’s poor productivity track record, Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers said investment levels on intellectual property are “nowhere near as high as they should be,” and that a more competitive business environment “would also help drive greater innovation and efficiency.”

“This is particularly important for small- and medium-sized businesses that can’t take advantage of the economies of scale afforded to larger companies,” she said.

I don’t mean to get too galaxy-brained about this, but it’s hard not to think of these words as they might apply to Canada’s telecom sector – if only because of the nature of the complaints in yesterday’s report: more service interruptions, slower-than-expected internet or wireless data speeds, poor audio quality, more frequent dropped phone calls.