I think there is probably nothing underlying the financial model of the mobile providers that would stop them from lowering the amounts Canadians pay for their cell service. Mobile companies have found all sorts of ways of making money. They're making money with text messaging, and one of their biggest money-makers is dial tone downloads, which for us might not mean very much, but talk to anybody who's below eighteen years old and they'll tell you they download $2.95 a piece iTones three or four times a week, just to change the tune when you call.
There's room for the companies to bring the rates down. The problem is we haven't found one of them. Maybe one of the new entrants will be able to reduce the cost and make it simpler for a consumer to understand what he is buying for a while. Maybe it's because our companies are too comfortable, but I don't think that's a reason for necessarily injecting new players who may decide to do the same thing, or will be a little bit more aggressive. The problem is you've got to always think about how many companies we can actually have.
Remember when we first had cell technology in Canada, we had what must have been 30 or 40 companies that started up in business, and then the ones that were most successful were bought up by Bell and Rogers. This means that we've got three or four operators, and even when we introduce new ones we're going to find that eventually they'll be bought up by the major ones.
Can our market permit good profit margins, which we've seen for three or four companies? We should maybe find ways to pressure companies to bring the rates down, but it's not a solution to bring in new people. And even though he talks about the innovation that you get from bringing in foreign investment, you have to wonder who stopped us from being very inventive in what we've been doing and successful in what we've been doing.