Government Urged to Protect Canadians by Rejecting Shaw/Rogers Merger

CIPPIC is supporting [1] a petition [2] (filed by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the National Pensioners Federation) urging the Governor in Council to reverse the CRTC's approval of a controversial merger between Shaw and Rogers. The merger would eliminate a major competitor while substantially increasing Rogers' market power in a communications ecosystem that is already deeply concentrated.

CIPPIC's supporting submission particularly highlighted the need to consider the inter-connected nature of communications competition. A conglomerated Rogers will not only be able to wield significant national market power in cable distribution, but also in home Internet and wireless. The loss of Shaw as a mobile competitor will be especially difficult to replace and will remove a key impediment on Rogers' market power.

The merger will harm customers in mobile, home Internet and cable and will undermine service innovation. The CRTC's decision to approve the broadcasting elements of the merger should be reversed.

Image source: Mike Lawrence, "Monopoly Key", Flickr [3], November 19, 2017, CC-BY 2.0