First there were a few .... then more entered the market ... and soon, there will be many more! The cell phone business has been a virtual monopoly in Canada, allowing cell phone providers to charge what ever they want, raising the prices with add-ons like system access charges and forcing us into ridiculously long contracts. Because of the large amount of cell providers in the US and Europe, those citizens pay a fraction of what we pay in Canada. But the good thing is - the Canadian landscape is changing. We see it with smaller cell phone subsidiaries of large companies, like Fido and Mike, offering services at reduced rate plans. We see it with new entrants into the market like Virgin, Wind, Mobilicity and soon, Shaw.
Nokia, which dominants the European market, has just announced a partnership with Yahoo. They will be providing mapping services to Yahoo and Yahoo will be providing email and chat functionality to Nokia phones. This is a direct competitive answer to Google and their location services.
With mergers like this and new players in the market, Canadians should see a drop in prices, more availability of pricing packages, and hopefully, the removal of nonsensical user fees and long term contracts.
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