Marketplace examines prices in different countries and finds more can be done to lower prices here

Despite government promises to lower the cost of mobile wireless plans and efforts to promote more competition in the market, many Canadians feel they're paying too much with few options for getting better rates. 

But the industry will tell a different story: that of a market with fierce or at least adequate competition, and companies providing Canadians with rates comparable to the rest of the world despite extraordinary challenges.

A Marketplace investigation into the cost of telecom services in Canada has found that many of the oft-quoted industry explanations for high wireless prices — costly operating margins and a sparse Canadian population, for example — are insufficient to explain lower prices found inother countries and even between some provinces.

• Rogers outage points to need for greater oversight of critical industry

"I'm a snowbird, and [when] I get my service in Mexico from Telcel it costs 200 pesos, which is about $14 a month Canadian," said Quebecer Cam Moody. Moody, like many Canadian travellers, is fed up with coming home from travelling to higher prices for wireless services than he sees in other countries.

"I get three gigs of data and I get calling to Mexico, Canada and the United States. Why is Canada so expensive?" he said.

Canadian prices still among highest in the world

Rewheel, an independent telecom research firm based in Finland, publishes reports on the mobile data pricing across 50 countries worldwide twice a year. Its latest, published in May of last year, once again ranked Canada among the most expensive countries for wireless rates. 

• Watch the full episode tonight at 8 p.m. on CBC-TV or catch up anytime at CBC Gem.

Canada's cost-per-gigabyte is seven times more expensive than Australia, 25 times more than Ireland and France, and 1,000 times more than Finland, according to the analysis.Marketplace calculated the data usage of common cellphone tasks using Rewheel's cost-per-gigabyte analysis in order to put those numbers into perspective.

ellphone users in other countries react to cost-per-gigabyte price differences: 

For example, scrolling Instagram for five minutes would cost about half a cent in France, while it would cost 20 cents in Canada. Downloading a half-hour show from YouTube would cost eight cents in Ireland and $1.03 in Canada. Downloading an entire season of Wednesday from Netflix would cost about $1.62 in Australia, and $10.22 in Canada. (All prices are in Canadian dollars based on the Dec. 1, 2022, exchange rates.)

"Canada didn't used to be one of the most expensive countries when I started measuring about 10 years ago," said Antonios Drossos, managing partner and researcher at Rewheel. He says that although prices have been falling in Canada, they have been falling much slower than most other countries.