A while ago the wireless spectrum auction in Canada ended and netted the Canadian government about $4.25-billion. My question is, was this whole spectrum auction really a good idea, and is it actually going to save Canadians money on their cell phone bills?
The companies who won spectrum in most cases paid in the area of hundreds of millions of dollars, in a lot of cases their bidding was over the half billion mark. How does the government expect this to bring down our cell phone bill while these carriers are trying to pay of their debt from the auction (in particular the new smaller carriers trying to start business)? Why couldn’t the government just cap the auction at a certain rate, and then enforce an open access policy if a certain amount was reached. Or why not just sell the spectrum at a cheap rate with an open access policy, forcing carriers to share their network with other providers?
The wireless auction was a stupid idea to begin with and I do not understand how the Canadian Government thought that this would bring down cell phone costs.
Related posts: