Canada's telecommunications regulator has ordered the dominant operators to take steps to increase competition in a market that has some of the world's highest billing rates, although the measure fell short of what some analysts had expected.
The move comes more than a year after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government asked the telecoms companies to cut bills by 25% or face consequences after high mobile bills became a hot button issue in the 2019 elections.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said the telecoms firms should offer wholesale wireless access to so-called Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), smaller outfits such as Videotron in Quebec that can then resell the capacity at reduced retail prices and pass on the savings to consumers.