Canadian's telecoms regular needs head examined re: stupid data rates

Eddy posted a note on my ‘o2 users are total CHUMPS‘ post asking me to take a look at a post on the Thomas Purves blog. I’ve quoted a lot of it below. This is just, just, just RIDICULOUS. Anyway, have a read…

Link: » Canada Worse than 3rd World Countries when it comes to Mobile Data Access

The motto of the CRTC, Canada’s telcom regulator is ‘Communications in the Public Interest”. Right.

If you live in Canada, write to your MP. The CRTC, as an institution, needs to be taken out and shot.*

This chart charts the best rates available from all carriers. And all levels of government say that ‘ICT” competitiveness is key factor in Canada’s future economic
prosperity. Ya. Right. I would like to say that Canada is a 3rd world country when it comes to Mobile ICT, except you can clearly see from this chart that even *Rwanda* has orders of magnitude better Mobile Data service than Canada.

As I’ve noted in the chart, 500MB is about 100 minutes of usage at a Canadian Carrier’s maximum (advertised) download speed of 700kB/s (your mileage will vary, International carriers are typically twice or four times faster). 500MB is not a lot of data in the grand scheme of things, a few GB could make a better example but in that case the red bars would be completely off the charts.

If you don’t live in Canada but you or your small business depends on mobile connectivity or net neutrality in general, don’t come here.

Heh, oh dear me.

So if o2 users here in the UK are CHUMPS for putting up with their data rates, what are Canadians? Shocking.