Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, committee members. Thank you for the invitation today.
With me is Phil Hartling, president of our wireless division.
I've been following the work of this committee, and I am pleased to provide facts and correct some inaccurate assumptions.
Affordability is an issue in Canada, one that is real and felt by many Canadians. Other industries are using Canada's inflation trend to offer Canadians the same or less at higher prices. Rogers is doing the exact opposite. We're lowering our prices, and offering Canadians more. Companies in other sectors simply can't say the same.
I believe our discussion today needs to be based on facts, and here are some of them.
Our wireless network reaches 99% of the population, but only covers 12% of our land mass. We're investing in satellite-to-mobile technology to connect every corner of our country. Our Internet footprint reaches 60% of households today. We're investing to reach every household.
In the last decade alone, Rogers has invested over $40 billion in our networks. To put this into context, that's more than the federal government's $39 billion in announced funding commitments for Canada's national housing strategy. Last year, that included investing over $1 billion just to manage the huge increase in wireless data usage.
Every year we reinvest 90% of our profits back into Canada. That's investment in Canadian infrastructure, Canadian jobs and the Canadian economy. We're making these record investments while inflation drives up our cost of raw materials and labour.
On top of that, the federal government imposes more costs on wireless carriers than many other countries. We paid seven times as much as U.S. carriers for 3500 megahertz spectrum. For low-band, five-gigabyte spectrum, we paid over 50% more. Annual spectrum fees in Canada are some of the highest in the world. They're up 15% in three years. Despite all of this, we are lowering prices for Canadians.
The federal government's own data from Statistics Canada shows wireless prices are down nearly 50% over the last five years. In the last year alone, they're down 16%.
Rogers has been the leader in driving this trend. We've cut the cost of data on our most popular five-gigabyte plan by over 70%. We led the industry and dropped our five-gigabyte entry price by over 40% to $50. We introduced the national “connected for success” wireless program with a free five-gigabyte smartphone, and a $25 five-gigabyte plan for over 2.5 million eligible low-income Canadians. We're offering 50 gigabytes for $34 on our Fido brand, all in the last year since coming together with Shaw.
Customers are getting more for less, both in absolute terms, and on a per gig basis.
There are few industries today where you see record investments and consumers receiving more, often at a lower cost. This is the outcome of rigorous competition. Last year, there were about 3,000 price plans in the market, and 4.9 million Canadians switched providers.
What does this mean? It means there's more choice.
The same can't be said about the U.K. or the U.S. The wireless consumer price index in the U.K. is up 24% over the past five years. In the U.S., it's up 1.5%. Wireless prices are higher in the U.S. than Canada.
I'm looking forward to our discussion today, but I want to make sure that we're grounded in the facts.
Thank you.