The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) has published its 2008 report on the state of the wireless industry in Canada.
Mobile subscriptions reached a total of 21,455,194 in 2008, having added more than 1.5 million subscriptions over the year. This amounts to a national wireless penetration rate of more than 67 percent with some metropolitan areas closing in on closer to 80 percent rates.
There are number of other interesting facts in the report:
- Wireless phones have shown one of the fastest adoption rates among consumer products in history.
- Despite Canada being the second largest country and having a relatively small population, Canada’s carriers together have a coverage that reaches more than 98 percent of Canadians.
- Half of all phone connections in Canada are now wireless.
- In 2008, 25,000 Canadians were employed in the wireless industry.
One fact that really surprised me was that Canadians apparently pay below or close to the average wireless prices across the 30-member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Would someone care to explain how they came up with that because every time I look at rates in the U.S., they seem better than ours.