Canada’s telecommunications industry experienced a 4.7% year-over-year increase in revenues in 2004 for a total of $33.3 billion. Most of the growth can be attributed to Internet and wireless services, according to the CRTC Telecom Report 2005 released earlier this week. More than 98% of Canadian households have telephone service with the local wireline market making up the biggest piece of the telecom pie (29% of revenues). On the traditional side of the business, the long distance market declined by 6.0% between 2003 ($5.9 billion in revenues) and 2004 ($5.6 billion) although the total number of long distance minutes increased by 6.0%.
The Internet is one of the fastest growing segments with 59% of households having an Internet subscription. Broadband access is now available to approximately 89% of Canadian households and 46% of those households actually subscribe to high-speed Internet services. Wireless, the other strong segment, increased 12.9% over the previous year to a total of 15 million subscribers in 2004. Wireless revenues jumped 17.6% from $8 billion to $9.5 billion.
The consumer survey portion of the report, based on 2005 data collected on behalf of the CRTC by Decima Research, reported:
* 64% of Canadians believe they have benefited from the availability of competition in the telecom industry.
* 70% of households with wireless service say the ability to keep their wireless telephone number was important when switching between service providers.
* 52% of households spend more than $75 per month on telecom services.
