Law Bytes Podcast – Episode 21 was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.
Michael Geist:
This is Law Bytes, a podcast with Michael Geist.
Charlie Angus:
On a two gigabyte plan where you pay about 75 bucks a month Canadian for a two gigabyte plan on your phone and you can still get gouged on top of that. In Paris, you pay 30 bucks. Rome, 24. Now, they might say that’s not really fair. You know, it’s different in Europe. So let’s compare a similar sized country with a similar sized population, similar size large rural regions, Australia. Australians pay $24.70 a month on average for two gigabytes. And in Canada, we’re paying 70.
Michael Geist:
The competitiveness of wireless markets has emerged as a major political issue in countries around the world as consumer pricing for those services attracts mounting attention. Many consumers and by extension media coverage looks to comparative data to see whether their pricing is “high or low”. There are obviously many factors behind wireless prices, but for many consumers, the top line issue is how much does the service cost and how much data do I get? Rewheel research, a Finland based consultancy has been at the forefront of pricing comparisons with extensive analysis of comparative mobile data pricing in countries around the world. Its reports of often called out Canada recently, noting that our prices are a world apart from more competitive markets. With Canadian telco giant Telus recently commissioning a study to challenge the rewheel research, I’m joined this week on the podcast by Antonios Drossos, managing partner of the firm. He talked to me from Finland about their findings, what lies behind Canada’s wireless pricing situation and the new Telus backed challenge.
Michael Geist:
Antonios, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast.
Antonios Drossos:
Thanks, Michael, and thanks for inviting us and giving us the opportunity to actually discuss about the work that we’re doing.
Michael Geist:
Okay, that’s great. What do we actually start there? Can you tell me a bit about your company and the reports you produce and who relies on your services and reports?
Antonios Drossos:
Yeah. So actually, you know, what is not widely known is that we are basically consultants. The independent research that we do is a side thing. So basically, when we are not very busy consulting operators, regulators, competition authorities and all the rest of our clients, then we do this independent research. The company was actually founded, let me remember now to was 2009. So we Rewheel has been operating now for over 10 years. Our background is basically 20 years from the industry. We started from equipment vendors. Then we work for mobile operators, wireless operators, and then went into consulting. We myself and the other founding partner Pal Zarandy, has been basically working for consulting after we left the operators mobile operators for some years. And at some point we were involved with mobile data. Back in 2007, 2008, and we we show a great opportunity to actually create the really specialized focus consultancy on mobile data. We were expecting already that mobile data and mobile broadband would become really, I would say, central, you know, going forward as it finally became, you know, in many countries. And that’s how we set it up Rewheel. So most of our work we do from consulting most of the income, we actually comes from consulting. And, you know, in our spare time, we do this independent research and we are kind of like a different of consulting firm because we take public, we take our opinions public. So we are pro competitive. We mostly work with clients that have similar views with us. And we usually very upfront on this when we meet a new client, either this is a private operator or is it a regulator or a competition authority would tell them this is our views can answer any you kind of like like what you hear or would be happy to to work with you.
I say a few things about our research we got involved in to the state of the European mobile markets back in 2012. We have done a lot of work privately and then we saw that some markets, you know, effective competition was working in some markets was not working pretty well. And ourselves, we had the can we ask to see, you know, why is this ha
