If you think your cable or satellite bill has been rising, you're not imagining things. New federal data show the price of a monthly subscription has risen swiftly in Canada over the past six years, outpacing the cost of other consumer items.
A report issued yesterday by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission shows the price of cable, satellite and pay-television services has risen 29 per cent since 2002.
The consumer price index - a measure of the cost of a set basket of goods - has risen 14 per cent in that time.
Meanwhile, the cost of Internet service dropped 4 per cent during the same period, and the price of home phone service climbed 6 per cent. The report, which is based on figures compiled by Statistics Canada, does not measure the cost of wireless phone bills in Canada.
Like the CPI, which tracks the cost of a set group of food and goods from year to year, the cable and home phone markets are tracked by comparing the basic price of a set of TV and phone services. The basket includes some add-on services, such as cable channels or voicemail on home phones, but is not impacted by the premium packages such as high-definition television.
CRTC officials said the data indicate that the increase was a result of higher rates for the average cable and satellite bill and not the result of adding high-end offerings such as HDTV and premium pay-TV services to the mix.
A spokeswoman for Rogers Communications Inc., Canada's largest cable company, could not be reached for comment. A representative from Bell TV, one of the largest satellite TV companies, could not be reached either.
The cable industry has been locked in a three-year battle with Canada's TV networks over price increases. The networks want to charge cable companies for their signals. Rogers has led the fight against those fees, which would be added to consumer bills, telling the CRTC that it has kept rate increases minimal in recent years, introducing them only to add more services to its offerings.
The 300-page report is an annual look at consumer trends in the telecom and broadcasting industries. Other trends emerged from the telecommunications sector, where growth continued to be driven by high-speed Internet and wireless services, although wireless revenue rose more slowly.
Overall telecom revenue hit $40.3-billion in 2008, an increase of 5.5 per cent from 2007. Wireless services accounted for almost $16-billion of that, representing 40 per cent of the industry's overall sales, the report said.
Even though wireless revenue posted a healthy 10-per-cent jump, the rise fell short of the annual 14 per cent recorded in the previous four years. Slower growth could pose a problem for three new independent wireless carriers expected to launch networks by next year, and could be a harbinger of battles to come between the entrenched players.
Bell Canada and Telus Corp., for example, are spending about $1-billion to upgrade their wireless networks to the standard that supports Apple Inc.'s highly profitable iPhone. They are expected to begin offering the device in the fall, which is prompting Rogers Communications Inc. to tout the arrival of blistering new speeds on its network in the Toronto area next month.
At the end of 2008, there were 22.1 million wireless phone subscribers in Canada, a 9-per-cent increase from the previous year. The technology has become so ubiquitous that 8 per cent of Canadian households have ditched their land lines in favour of wireless only, and analysts expect that figure to keep rising. In 2007, about 6 per cent of homes were fully wireless.
Internet revenue rose 9.4 per cent to $6.2-billion last year. About three-quarters of all households in the country are now online,. Monthly local and long-distance revenue continued to slip, with the telecom companies charging noticeably higher monthly rates than the cable companies ($45.25 per line versus $36.03). Cable companies hold just over half of all high-speed Internet accounts. After just four years of offering home phone service, they have captured 22.5 per cent of the residential line market, up from 18 per cent a year earlier.
