Cutting The Cost of Wireless: How TextNow Can Help Canadians
With the upcoming Canadian Federal Elections, we’ve been inundated with the usual chatter about economic plans, quality of life, and the promises made to improve those factors. For us, one such promise to come out of this year’s campaign, manages to hit close to home: “reduce the cost of wireless services by 25% within four years.” (Shekar, Shruti. “Election 2019: Justin Trudeau promises to cut cellphone bills by 25 percent within 4 years.” MobileSyrup 22 Sept 2019 Web. 24 Sept 2019)
Made by not just the Liberal party, but by the NDP party as well, it seems as though the reality of the wireless market in Canada is finally sinking in. A reality that we have been openly talking about since 2017, and then again most recently this past year in a BetaKit article where we broke it down to this simple fact:
“Canadian consumers pay some of the highest rates for wireless services anywhere in the developed world.”
It has been known that Canada’s reluctance to allow competition in the wireless market has given its main carriers the freedom to set the price for wireless service. Even if that price is decidedly higher than its direct neighbours in the south. When we started this company a decade ago, it was built upon one important principle: Communication belongs to everyone, and to every budget- even if it’s $0. So while we’ve been shut out of the Canadian wireless market, we’ve made it a priority to offer free service to our users, even if that service can only be accessed through Wi-Fi for the time being. In our experience, when it comes down to paying $180/month for a cell phone plan, or finding a Wi-Fi hotspot, there are enough families that would rather spend that money on other expenses or put it straight into a savings account.
After spending much time advocating for change, we would love nothing more than to lead the charge in offering Canadians more affordable wireless service. We started out as a Canadian company, and have made large strides toward hiring Canadian talent, and expanding our offices right here in Waterloo, ON, where it all started. Extending our wireless services to Canadian families would be a decade-long dream finally coming to fruition. So we hope that by the time the next election promises are made, that dream will finally be Canada’s reality.
