Driving home from school one day listening to AM radio, an advertisement caught my attention. Apparently, a large US cell phone company is bringing their business to Canadian soil. Verizon, a giant US wireless company four times the size of Rogers, Bell, and TELUS combined, has officially intimidated the top cell phone companies in Canada.
My question is, why would such large businesses, even if they’re not as large as Verizon, be so worried about this new competitor? They have started many campaigns to encourage backlash and discourage potential Verizon customers.
I think it’s all to scare Canadians to make sure they don’t invest in this American powerhouse. I think this has less to do with benefiting Canadians and keeping our culture and more to do with making sure they don’t lose any revenue in the next year.
I find it difficult to feel any pity for the CEO’s of these large companies; maybe they will lose money, but does this mean they will be barely scraping by day after day to put bread on the table? Well, the annual salaries of the CEOs of Bell, Rogers, and Telus are $19,551,345, $13,687,699, and $1,360,000 respectively. They’re rich. I’m not so worried about them as much as the average worker of the companies. Will Bell, Rogers, and Telus have to start laying off people due to lost income? I really hope not, because the CEOs salaries suggest that there is more than enough money to go around. However, it is possible that Verizon will hire Canadian workers, therefore creating even more jobs than the ones lost.
I write this article to inform and increase awareness on the issue. I would also like for the youth of today to be critical of everything they hear and read; you need to research more about a topic before you form an opinion on it, which is what I did. Currently, my position is as follows: Let Verizon come if they want to come! As a consumer, of course I’d want the best rates for my phone and Internet, which I could not live without. Honestly, I think the rates of Rogers is ridiculously high, and Bell does not fall far behind it. Telus has been the best so far, but I would like to see what Verizon has to offer me.
Information sources:
http://www.fairforcanada.ca/?gclid=CJ-Y3Y_1_rgCFUrZQgodR3oAvQ