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Slow to go wireless

Canada is huge and relatively unpopulated; we’re simultaneously socialist, conservative, and liberal with confusing results; and while our cities are big and generally quite liveable, we’ve still kept a rural mindset.

Canada is huge and relatively unpopulated; we’re simultaneously socialist, conservative, and liberal with confusing results; and while our cities are big and generally quite liveable, we’ve still kept a rural mindset.

Those aren’t necessarily bad things – personally I think we should have tried to cap our population at 30 million, something we would have achieved naturally if the federal government didn’t look at immigration as a cash cow. And I wouldn’t trade our political sensitivity and social priorities for anything.

But while there are a lot of positives to being the Canada we are, it does mean we’re generally slow to innovate and to adopt new technologies – if it ain’t broke we don’t fix it, and it takes us a long time to admit that something is broken.

Compare our situation to the U.S., which is well-populated, capitalist, neo-conservative, and extremely urbanized. As a result Americans are comparatively quick when it comes to adopting new technologies, and like to be on the cutting edge. For example:

According to a new Statistics Canada report, there are currently 47 wireless subscribers for every 100 Canadians, which is up 10.9 per cent from the previous year. The term "wireless" refers to cell phones, BlackBerrys and other telecommunications tools.

While that may seem like a respectable growth rate, keep in mind that the U.S. passed that same mark in 2002, three years ago, and currently has 61.7 wireless subscribers for every 100 people.

And the U.S. is far from leading the world when it comes to wireless adoption – South Korea, Japan, Israel, and some European nations are even quicker to adopt new technologies. Some countries, like the U.K. and Italy, actually have over 100 per cent wireless saturation, or 100-plus users for every 100 people because so many people are subscribing to more than one service.

Overall Canada ranks 27 th for wireless penetration out of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development. And while things are moving forward it’s happening so slowly that the gap between Canada and other countries is growing.

One possible reason for the slow rate of adoption is cost – Canadians pay about 60 per cent more for wireless service than do Americans, and almost 20 per cent more than Europeans.

Part of the reason for higher costs has to do with the level of competition – Canada has Bell, Telus and Rogers, while the U.S. has almost three times as many major carriers in direct competition with each other.

Because the U.S. is so urbanized, there is also more competition within major markets, while most Canadians are often limited to just one or two services.

That’s not to suggest that Canadian companies are gouging – they’re under increasing competition from cable companies and Voice Over IP services, and the telecommunications industry is so heavily regulated from Ottawa that it’s hard to make quick changes in pricing and services to follow the market.

One example is the ability for people to keep their cell phone number if they switch service providers – this service is already in effect in the U.S., but won’t be available in Canada until 2007. As a result, Canadians are hesitant to change wireless service providers and going through all the hassle that comes with a new number, even if there is the possibility of getting a better deal somewhere else.

In addition, the Canadian government is only now considering giving national telecom companies the right to set and change prices locally without first getting the go-ahead from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. That regulatory burden makes it almost impossible for Canadian telecom companies to compete for customers on price, which means prices are slow to come down.

The geographically urbanized landscape in the U.S. and elsewhere also means a quicker payback for installing wireless infrastructure – the more people living in a given area, the more potential wireless subscribers.

For Canadian companies, providing any kind of wireless service outside of major urban areas is extremely costly, if it’s economically feasible at all. That slow payback for service outside of cities also helps to explain why Canadians pay so much more for wireless services than anyone else.

The fact that large areas of Canada are only sparsely populated doesn’t help our wireless adoption rate. Without more people, it may never be feasible to offer wireless services in those areas.

Even Whistler, one of the leading resorts in the world, has its dead spots.

Korea’s gaming problem

South Korea is the most wired, wireless, and computer savvy country in the world right now, with Internet gaming driving the rate of adoption. According to one statistic, the country has 17 million hardcore gamers, representing roughly 35 per cent of the population.

In fact, gaming is so popular that the country is concerned by the growing number of video game addicts. There are reports of people quitting jobs and dropping out of school to play games, with some gamers spending 15 hours a day at their terminals. Recently a 28-year-old man died after playing for almost 50 hours in a row. In 2002 another man died after an 86-hour session.

The number of people being treated for gaming addiction has soared from 2,243 in 2003 to 8,978 in 2004. In the first seven months of 2005, the number of people seeking treatment was already 7,649.