OTTAWA — Canada’s telecom regulator says the price of television, telephone, internet and mobile services dropped by 11 per cent in two years to an average of $191 per month as of 2018.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission says the decrease is primarily attributable to lower prices for mobile services.
The high price of mobile phone services in Canada was one of the hot consumer-oriented topics in the recent federal election, with the Liberals promising to bring the average bill down 25 per cent from 2018 levels.
The CRTC’s annual study of telecom prices included an analysis of several “baskets” of mobile services with different characteristics.
It found the biggest declines were for services offering two gigabytes of data or more.
The most expensive category, with unlimited talking time and texting plus 5 GB per month of data, cost an average of $51.05 in 2018, down 35 per cent over two years.
Mobile services for 150 to 450 minutes of talking time and up to 1 GB of data decreased by about 22 per cent compared with 2016, mobile phone services with no data and 150 minutes of talking time declined 21 per cent.