Canada making it a priority to get telecoms to offer ‘affordable’ mobile phone plans

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has outlined its priorities in a new “strategic plan.”

In an updated October 21st post on the Government of Canada’s website, the telecom regulator writes that going forward, it will focus on three key areas:

1. Promoting competition and investment to deliver reliable, affordable, and high-quality Internet and cellphone services.
2. Modernizing Canada’s broadcasting framework and creating the bargaining framework for the Online News Act.
3. Investing in the CRTC to better serve Canadians.

The agency says it’s working to promote “competition and investment to deliver reliable, affordable, and high-quality Internet and cellphone services.” It adds that the specific outcomes it hopes to reach in doing so are:

1. Increased choice and affordable telecommunications services.
2. Investment in high-quality networks.
3. Connectivity for rural, remote and Indigenous communities.
4. A safe communications system.

Given Canada’s notoriously expensive phone and internet plans, it will be especially interesting to see how it will deliver “affordable” services for Canadians.

Other goals include creating the “bargaining framework” for the Online News Act, “supporting Indigenous participation” in proceedings through the Indigenous Relations Team and recruiting “people from diverse groups to help ensure the CRTC has a wide range of perspectives.”

Another particularly interesting point is the CRTC noting that it will implement the amended Broadcasting Act “to reflect how each radio station, television service and online streaming service should support the broadcasting system.” 

To do that, the CRTC says it will launch “public consultations on: the definitions of Canadian and Indigenous content; the structural relationships between small, medium, and large players in traditional and online streaming services; and radio and audio streaming services.”

Notably, streamers like Apple and Spotify are currently seeking legal challenges against the CRTC for its Online Streaming Act requirement that they must pay a five percent levy on domestic revenue that will go towards Canadian content. Those contests are currently underway.

Ultimately, though, talk is one thing and action is another entirely, so it remains to be seen how, exactly, the CRTC will address all of its goals.