Wireless Code of Conduct

I am one of those not too impressed by the voluntary code of conduct recently adopted by most members of the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA). It is true that if the carriers comply with the code in good faith there are benefits to consumers. That should at the very least lower the heat due to shoddy customer service and billing disputes. In turn, this would lessen the likelihood of CRTC intervention with stricter regulation and enforcement, which is of benefit to the service providers.

What it won't do is lower your bill. Let's recognize that these companies are businesses answerable to shareholders, and therefore they will closely watch the bottom line. Absent a drop in operating costs and capital expenditures, current margins, and therefore revenues, must be preserved to protect their profits and share prices. How and what you pay for may change, but the ARPU (average revenue per user) isn't likely to drop. An example of this is high data volume pricing to compensate for loss of walled-garden services: since we want the internet but not the carrier's own services, we will still end up paying a similar amount (when averaged over the user base). In other words, you will still get screwed, but your service provider will very nicely explain to you exactly how they are screwing you.

Operating costs and capital expenditures are not expected to drop since there is little leeway in the carriers' budgets for the present. The carriers must invest in their networks to remain competitive, and that is what they are doing. Reducing operating costs without major changes in operating procedures would only worsen customer service, which is unlikely to be contemplated in the current climate. The only force strong enough to reduce prices and service provider margins is competition. That is on the way, albeit more slowly than most of us would prefer.

In this light it is interesting that the CRTC has withdrawn its nascent tool for enabling consumers to conveniently compare prices between wireless service packages. When I first heard of this I was not shocked that alleged lobbying had caused them to shelve the project, but rather I was astonished that the CRTC was involved in producing this tool at all. I don't see how this can be a legitimate role for the regulator; it is a job for consumers themselves.

The consumer activists that are complaining about the tool's withdrawal should be producing one of their own. Certainly they know how to do it, since they were closely involved in the CRTC-sponsored focus groups and got to play with the tool. Its sources are publicly-available data from the service providers, so there is no secret sauce recipe that the CRTC is hiding. While helpful, it isn't even necessary for the CRTC to release the code for the tool, as Geist suggests. If it's a good idea, just do it and stop complaining.