Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
This is probably one of the most important studies that this committee is undertaking right now. Canadians pay the highest cellphone bills on the whole planet—not just in North America and not just in part of the world, but in the whole world. Only South Africa seems to have some of the higher fees.
The reason is that we have basically a de facto network duopoly in Canada. We have only two independent mobile networks in Canada with a national footprint. We have Rogers, which does cost-sharing or sharing with Vidéotron, and then we have Bell and Telus, which operate on each side. We only have two in this whole country, so it's easy to see what's happened over the years: With fewer players and fewer sellers and many buyers, the prices have gone up.
I'll talk about some of the recent data we have. We've talked about some from Stats Canada, but this is some 2023 data from Rewheel. Canadians are paying a minimum monthly price for 4G and 5G smart phone plans that have at least 100 gigabytes, a thousand minutes and 10 megabytes per second, which is peak speed, at $90 per plan. Those in the United States are paying $44, and Australians are paying less than $30. This is what happens when this major oligopoly controls the country.
The Prime Minister said he was going to reduce cellphone fees by 25%. This was in 2019. Based on these numbers, that didn't happen.
The industry minister said that a fourth national player would be able to reduce these fees across Canada. That was supposed to be Freedom and Vidéotron. Right now we're seeing, with prices going up $9 a month, that this is not happening.
At the CRTC, you've been given directives. I want to talk specifically about the directives you've been given from the government. I want to go specifically this morning to MVNOs. How many MVNOs do we have operating in Canada at this moment?