Ted Woodhead, senior vice president of regulatory affairs at Telus, thinks Canadians should be paying more for their mobile phone plans than they currently are. “Canada really SHOULD be the most expensive country for wireless service in the OECD, but we’re not,” he said in a recent blog post.

He cites Canada’s extensive wireless infrastructure as the reason for this claim, which required “a significant amount of money… [to maintain] a network in a vast, sparsely populated landscape. Canada has only 12 subscribers per square km, compared to an average of 37 in the U.S. and 312 in the UK.”

“Don’t let the critics with a vested interest in a well-established, but ill-informed, position spin you on this one,” he continues. “Scratch the surface of their arguments and get to the facts.”

The “facts” he’s referring to are within a report conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which compares the price of Canadian mobile plans to 34 other featured countries. Only once does Canada scratch the top three most expensive countries in one category, and routinely ranks cheaper than the U.S. in a handy-dandy chart, all of which you can see here.

The chart is a little misleading, however, as it only includes a comparison of countries in the G7, thereby excluding 28 other countries from the results. Sure, Canada’s not the worst of the worst, but it’s still in the top 10 most expensive countries (out of a total 35) in nearly every category. 

[via Canada.com]

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Jeremy Schipper is an intern at Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @jeromeoschipps.

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