Canadian Wireless Penetration Reaches Two-Thirds

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) announced in a report yesterday that two-thirds (64%) of Canadian households report owning or having access to a wireless phone, a significant increase from 2000, when only 44% of Canadian households claimed wireless phone access.

Albertans were at the forefront of wireless phone adoption with a penetration rate of 79%, while Quebecers represent the other end of the spectrum at 51%.

Mobile phone users in Canada most commonly use these features: text messaging (25%); taking pictures (15%); downloading content (15%); push-to-talk service (7%); instant messaging (6%); send or receive e-mail (6%); search information from the Internet (4%); multimedia messaging (3%); listening to music (2%); and downloading music (2%).

For more information on the study, go here.

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brian s

Let’s be clear about this. Most measures of wireless penetration divide the number of wireless subscriptions in the country by the population, not by the number of households. And by this measure Canada fares very poorly, around 54%. There are still only 16.9M wireless subscribers and a population of around 30M

Asking people in a household whether they have ‘access to a wireless phone’ is a ridiculous question in the face of real information, available from the 3 companies in Canada.

The other issue with this report is that there is no comparison to other countries. In Finland, a country with great wireline service and cold climate like Canada, the wireless penetration is over or near 100% and I suspect if you did the decima side of the report asking who ‘has access to a wireless phone’ you’d also get close to 100%.

If the only context this report provides is the comparison between 2000, it’s not much of a report.

And don’t get me onto the reasons for our low penetration….
brian s

Let’s be clear about this. Most measures of wireless penetration divide the number of wireless subscriptions in the country by the population, not by the number of households. And by this measure Canada fares very poorly, around 54%. There are still only 16.9M wireless subscribers and a population of around 30M

Asking people in a household whether they have ‘access to a wireless phone’ is a ridiculous question in the face of real information, available from the 3 companies in Canada.

The other issue with this report is that there is no comparison to other countries. In Finland, a country with great wireline service and cold climate like Canada, the wireless penetration is over or near 100% and I suspect if you did the decima side of the report asking who ‘has access to a wireless phone’ you’d also get close to 100%.

If the only context this report provides is the comparison between 2000, it’s not much of a report.

And don’t get me onto the reasons for our low penetration….

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